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Ford Ditching Microsoft for Blackberry


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I've been waiting for this day to come Richard to tell you....I told you so!

 

Microsoft is shedding this business and won't be supporting it going forward.

 

And btw, Uconnect 8.4, 8.4N, 8.4A, and 8.4AN are all based on QNX, the most praised system in the business.

 

Have fun defending Microsoft again on this.

 

I'll be over at FIN, I won't be back here to follow-up.

What happened to Borg? He never posts anymore and now this cryptic post? Edited by Pioneer
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Alright, alright. Enough chatter about someone who isn't even here...errr...posting here at least.

 

As for the software, whatever works. Automakers switch up suppliers all the time. It's time to start looking at these sorts of components in that same way. Systems like MFT or CUE or whatever will be commonplace in short time with many different choices for automakers to use to implement them. I imagine as time goes on, they will become more plug-and-play friendly much in the way car stereos did, giving automakers greater flexibility in offering different systems across their product lines.

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Things I never knew about QNX. From a Bloomberg article:

 

"The QNX operating system "is the standard right now," said Matthew Stover, an analyst at Guggenheim Partners in Boston. "QNX is a well-known, understood OS. It's proven."

 

"BlackBerry is already a supplier of technology and engineering to Ford, among other automakers, and QNX technology is already in use in Ford vehicles on the road today, said Paul Leroux, a QNX spokesman."

 

"This is really the crown jewel in BlackBerry's crown and could make the rest of the company shine as well," Thilo Koslowski, auto analyst for researcher Gartner Inc. in Santa Clara, California, said yesterday."

 

"BlackBerry's QNX Software Systems can be found in cars made by Audi and BMW, according to its Web site. QNX and Microsoft are the main suppliers of automotive operating system software, according to researcher IHS iSuppli. BlackBerry, at the time named Research in Motion Ltd., bought QNX Software Systems for $200 million in 2010. In addition to its presence in cars, QNX technology is used to manage nuclear-power plants and by the U.S. military for unmanned aerial drones. Its customers include Cisco Systems Inc., General Electric Co. and Caterpillar Inc."

 

"I look at this right now as a funeral ceremony for the Microsoft automotive operating system, this is last rites in a lot of ways," said Guggenheim's Stover, who rates Ford the equivalent of a hold. Microsoft struggled because the economics of what they were trying to do with cars "are totally different" than computers and smartphones, he said.

The operating system in the car entertainment system has become more of a commodity, and now added functions are more important, Koslowski said. QNX has done a better job of integrating compatibility with other operating systems such as those from Apple, Google and included emerging Internet standards, he said.

"You have to look at it more from a perspective of how much functionality do I get for what price and really move your investment budgets to other areas that become much more strategic for creating differentiation," Koslowski said. "The industry is realizing it has to do a better job to create a unique experience for its customers."

Full article here:

http://www.autonews.com/article/20140224/OEM06/140229941/fords-reported-pick-of-qnx-over-microsoft-for-next-gen-sync-boosts

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I thought it was reported that there were plans in place to build the next gen MFT off of Windows 8 embedded? Maybe the rumor of MS shedding non-core technologies, meaning automotive, is true and MS pulled the plug.

 

At any rate, as much as I am a fan of MS, if this makes MFT more stable and robust, I'm all for it. I'm of the camp who feels that the OS doesn't matter near as much as the apps built on top of it.

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Rumor is it will be backwards compatible with existing MFT hardware although the new vehicles will have new hardware.

 

If that's the case, that's rather impressive. Now, with that said, I'm not so sure that's the best course of action. Make the previous gen the best it can be with the hardware you had to work with, then leverage the new hardware to make the next system that much better. Don't saddle the new code with support for old hardware. Unless, of course, they are writing two completely different versions.

 

EDIT: Remember reading that the new QNX OS has great functionality with HTML 5, maybe this isn't as big of a deal as I was thinking.

Edited by fordmantpw
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If that's the case, that's rather impressive. Now, with that said, I'm not so sure that's the best course of action. Make the previous gen the best it can be with the hardware you had to work with, then leverage the new hardware to make the next system that much better. Don't saddle the new code with support for old hardware. Unless, of course, they are writing two completely different versions.

 

EDIT: Remember reading that the new QNX OS has great functionality with HTML 5, maybe this isn't as big of a deal as I was thinking.

 

I assume the hardware upgrade is just a new faster chip and QNX will run on the old one as well as the new one so there isn't really any modification required. Sort of like changing from an intel cpu to an AMD cpu or from a slower cpu to a faster cpu - the O/S doesn't care.

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I assume the hardware upgrade is just a new faster chip and QNX will run on the old one as well as the new one so there isn't really any modification required. Sort of like changing from an intel cpu to an AMD cpu or from a slower cpu to a faster cpu - the O/S doesn't care.

 

You're probably right. It'll just run faster on the new hardware.

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Rumor is it will be backwards compatible with existing MFT hardware although the new vehicles will have new hardware.

That would be great as long as it doesn't slow things down on an older generation system. The reason I say this is because with smartphones (or computers) many times newer software takes more resources and actually slows them down. Now there is a possibility it will be more efficient and actually have the reverse effect so I guess we will have to wait and see.

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It's a micro kernel which means it will be more efficient and should actually run better on the older hardware and much much better on newer hardware. This is not Windoze or application software - it's a near real-time micro kernel O/S.

 

Also - moving from Flash to HTML 5 should help a lot.

Edited by akirby
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To the poster that commented the execs all use blackberrys and this decision may be related, I would comment--the leadership team will no longer be using blackberry in the next month. Ford IT top brass announced the company will no longer support the blackberry enterprise server for corporate email. This seems incompatible with the mytouch decision and their current / future partnership with RIM. iOS and android are clearly inferior went it comes to email so this decision baffled me.

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To the poster that commented the execs all use blackberrys and this decision may be related, I would comment--the leadership team will no longer be using blackberry in the next month. Ford IT top brass announced the company will no longer support the blackberry enterprise server for corporate email. This seems incompatible with the mytouch decision and their current / future partnership with RIM. iOS and android are clearly inferior went it comes to email so this decision baffled me.

The decision is easy: RIM doesn't offer phone products that anyone wants anymore. The substantial drop in their residential customers is only going to make things worse for their enterprise unit. If you thought they were slow rolling out new phones and features before...

 

Yes, the BES is a very secure, easy to implement solution, and likely something that will be snatched up in the liquidation by a competitor when they finally fold. But the strength of the backbone is undermined by the weaknesses in the things the customers actually see and feel every day in their hands.

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