BlackBerry to power BYTON's innovative in-car experience for its production vehicles

WATERLOO, Ontario and SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 21, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE): BlackBerry Limited (NYSE:BB) (TSX:BB) and intelligent electric vehicle maker BYTON announced today that the innovative in-car experience within BYTON’s first series of production vehicles will feature BlackBerry QNX technology.

BYTON chose BlackBerry as a foundational piece of BYTON’s innovative in-car experience because of its ability to partition and isolate safety-critical systems from non-safety critical systems, ensuring that critical systems are isolated and can run safely at all times. As part of the deal, BlackBerry will license its BlackBerry QNX technology to BYTON, including its industry-leading QNX SDP 7.0 real-time operating system and Hypervisor 2.0 software.

“We are excited to partner with BlackBerry QNX, the market leader for safety-certified and secure next-generation connected car software, who will help us deliver BYTON’s Shared Experience Display, which serves as a comprehensive communal lounge experience for in-car communication, entertainment and work,” said Jeff Chung, Vice President, Intelligent Car Experience at BYTON. “Enabling the seamless integration of navigation, infotainment and critical driving functions is no small task, and when it comes to integrating critical and non-critical applications and information in a cluster environment, safety and security are our top priorities. By leveraging BlackBerry technology we’ll be able to deliver both, not only providing an entirely new connected experience for people on the move, but one that does so reliably and securely.”

“BYTON is pushing the envelope in autonomous vehicle development and the opportunity to contribute our technology to their first series of production vehicles is a real privilege,” said John Wall, SVP and GM of BlackBerry QNX, BlackBerry. “Following our recent announcement that QNX software is now embedded in more than 120 million cars, never before have we had the chance to embed our robust and secure software platforms in as many game-changing products. BYTON has reimagined the infotainment and digital instrument cluster and we look forward to working with them to achieve their vision of a better and more distinctive driving experience.”

At CES 2018 in Las Vegas, BYTON premiered its M-Byte concept car and announced plans to design and build a line of smart premium electric cars with Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous driving capabilities for the Chinese, U.S. and European markets. Sales are set to begin in China in 2019, and sales in the United States and Europe are planned to start in 2020.

As the leader in safety-certified, secure, and reliable software for the automotive industry, BlackBerry currently provides OEMs around the world with state-of-the-art technology to protect hardware, software, applications and end-to-end systems from cyberattacks. BlackBerry’s pedigree in safety, security and continued innovation has led to recent automotive design wins with Baidu, Delphi, Denso, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Visteon, Jaguar Land Rover and others.