Many companies are quickly embarking on autonomous vehicle creation and delivery. One recent entrant into this field is the collaboration between BlackBerry Ltd and the Chinese internet search company Baidu. The two companies signed a deal to jointly develop self-driving vehicle technology. This news caused a surge in BlackBerry’s shares (listed in Toronto) by 13 percent. This makes for a four year high for the company’s shares.
There have also been similar deals with firms such as Qualcomm, Denso, and Aptiv, to develop self-driving technology using the QNX software of BlackBerry. The technology is expected to rake in a lot of money from 2019 onwards.
Investors and analysts are keeping a close eye on these agreements as they expect QNX technology to be a game changer in the self-driving vehicle sector. This technology will also be working as an operating system for chips used in the vehicles.
QNX will be working for Apollo, what Baidu calls the “Android” of the self-driving vehicle industry. Speaking on this occasion, analyst Todd Coupland of CIBC Capital Markets said, “The opportunity is global, it’s for a very large market and I think it’s a very solid win for BlackBerry.”
There have been important partnerships between Apollo and car makers such as Ford Motor, Hyundai Motor Group, and other carmakers from China.
