BlackBerry Limited made a significant stride in the automotive technology landscape today with the official launch of QNX Sound, a groundbreaking development platform designed to revolutionize in-vehicle sound experiences. The platform uniquely decouples audio and acoustics software from the vehicle hardware, providing audio designers and engineers unprecedented creative freedom. Following this announcement, BlackBerry Limited experienced a marginal increase in its stock value, with shares opening Monday’s trading at $3.27, up slightly from Friday’s closing session at $3.26.
QNX Sound is engineered to empower automakers, offering a seamless and cost-effective consolidation of all audio and acoustic functions within the main software stack of the software-defined vehicle architecture. Leveraging pre-integrated and pre-tested core technologies, QNX Sound provides a comprehensive out-of-the-box library featuring functional modules for telephony, safety alerting, noise reduction, sound enhancement, media playback, and more. This software foundation not only enhances control over the quality and functionality of these services but also introduces advanced tuning tools with a graphical programming interface, unlocking limitless possibilities for signal processing creativity.
For the first time in the automotive industry, QNX Sound provides an entirely software-driven foundation, enabling automakers to explore new audio-based services. This opens up avenues for collaborations with technology companies and multimedia content providers to introduce value-added features into vehicles, potentially creating new revenue streams through optional feature activations or upgrades from base audio to premium levels, offered through on-demand or subscription services.
“In the software-defined vehicle age, audio becomes a new playing field for innovation and differentiation,” remarked John Wall, Senior Vice President and Head of QNX at BlackBerry. “QNX Sound is the ultimate digital audio platform for the automotive industry, providing the most comprehensive foundation for innovation. Through it, we enable automakers to explore new business opportunities and exciting collaborations that will truly appeal to and excite the end user.”
What sets QNX Sound by BlackBerry apart is its status as the sole software-defined audio and acoustics solution in the automotive industry that has undergone rigorous testing in production and is fully pre-integrated into next-generation System on Chip (SoCs). The platform is seamlessly integrated with BlackBerry’s QNX Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) and QNX Hypervisor. Moreover, it features an audio extension mechanism, allowing third-party signal processing suppliers to compile and deploy their own c-code algorithms.
Additionally, QNX Sound has been pre-tested with leading measurement and simulation equipment suppliers, aligning with industry open standards such as VirtIO. This facilitates sound design, tuning, and signal flow design capabilities for innovative features, both in the cloud and, eventually, on hardware targets.
In essence, QNX Sound by BlackBerry has laid the foundation for a new era in automotive audio innovation, providing automakers with the tools to shape unparalleled in-vehicle audio experiences and explore lucrative business opportunities. As the automotive industry continues to evolve towards software-defined vehicles, QNX Sound stands at the forefront, offering a transformative solution that transcends traditional boundaries and paves the way for an exciting future in automotive technology.
