Late last month, BlackBerry Ltd (www.blackberry.com) and Jaguar Land Rover announced that the companies have entered into a multi-year agreement to collaborate and develop technology for the automotive manufacturer’s next-generation vehicles.

As part of the agreement, BlackBerry will license its QNX and Certicom technology to JLR, as well as assign a team of
engineers to support the development of new Electronic Control Unit (ECU) modules. The first ECU project will be a next-generation infotainment system.

Blackberry’s John Wall said: “We are at a pivotal moment, where innovative automakers, such as JLR, are realising
that they need to take an active role in defining the software architecture for their vehicles.

“Connected and autonomous vehicles will react and drive based on ‘rich data’. Our platforms help process data efficiently and keep it both secure and trusted.”

BlackBerry currently provides OEMs around the world with technology designed to ‘protect and mitigate’ hardware, software, applications and ‘end to end’ systems from cyber attacks.

The company’s recent automotive applications includes work with Baidu, Delphi, Denso, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Visteon — plus others.