The company’s chief executive revealed this as the fallen smartphone pioneer looks elsewhere for growth. The company, which is racing to increase software sales as its handset unit and related legacy service access fees shrink, hopes to make itself indispensable in the automotive industry’s looming self-driving arms race.
Meanwhile, the company’s Toronto-listed shares were up 2.9 percent at C$10.40, after earlier rising as much as 4 percent to a one-month high.
BlackBerry is hoping its security and safety credentials help it win a seat at the table as an array of automakers, chip and sensor providers and software developers work in competitive co-operation to bring self-driving cars to the mass market.
BlackBerry will initially work with middleware supplier PolySync and semiconductor company Renesas Electronics Corp, as well as its hometown University of Waterloo on its autonomous driving project, but hopes to welcome more companies to its Ottawa facility.
The company’s QNX unit, renamed BlackBerry QNX, currently employs around 400 engineers, some three-quarters of them at its facility in Kanata on the outskirts of Ottawa. BlackBerry has about 5,000 employees in total, Reuters reports.
