Flickr / Ben Stassen / Creative Commons Licence

The days of BlackBerry-made handsets being a common sight may be over, but the Canadian company is shifting its focus onto software – but not in the ways you might think.

The firm has signed a new deal with car manufacturer Ford to provide it with code that is likely to be used in the tech giant's self-driving vehicles. In particular, BlackBerry is going to focus on an operating system and security software.


The deal will see the phone manufacturer "dedicate a team" to work with Ford on its QNX Neutrino OS.

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The operating system can be used to highlight cars and objects, on screen, that are near an autonomous vehicle, as well as showing maps in car entertainment setups. Some of Ford's current cars are already using variations of the QNX code. BlackBerry's security software will also be introduced in Ford's cars to try to protect them from being hacked.

In September, BlackBerry said it was stopping its in-house hardware manufacturing and would focus on software.

The deal with Ford is the latest one in which a car manufacturer has either purchased or made an agreement with a software company to help advance driverless ambitions. General Motors purchasedsoftware company Cruise Automation; Hertz has signed a deal with Uber; and Ford itself has invested $182.2 million (£148m) in code company Pivotal.


By 2021, Ford hopes to have launched a fleet of fully autonomous taxis. In five years the company said it wants to have a "high-volume, fully autonomous" car working commercially by offering a "ride-hailing or ride-sharing service".

Earlier this year, WIRED took a ride in one of the firm's autonomous Ford Fusion cars and found it to be reliable to the point of boredom.

The American firm has also demonstrated how its self-driving cars can control themselves at night and also announced it would rollout ride-sharing vans (minibuses) after it purchased San Fransisco startup Chariot in September.