Automakers are bypassing Tier 1s. About 67% of QNX’s latest design wins are direct with OEMs, marking a major industry reset.
27 Oct 2025 | 3494 Views | By Shahkar Abidi
Step inside a new Mahindra & Mahindra XUV700, and you are greeted not just by leather and steel, but by a dual-screen digital cockpit powered by a high-end Qualcomm processor. It is a vivid illustration of a seismic shift in the automotive industry as the car is no longer just ...
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Step inside a new Mahindra & Mahindra XUV700, and you are greeted not just by leather and steel, but by a dual-screen digital cockpit powered by a high-end Qualcomm processor. It is a vivid illustration of a seismic shift in the automotive industry as the car is no longer just a machine, but a sophisticated, connected computer.
And deep within its electronic heart, managing the complex symphony of pixels and processors, lies software from a company many still associate with iconic keyboards: BlackBerry QNX.
QNX was originally an independent Canadian company called QNX Software Systems, and focused on developing its real-time operating system (RTOS) called QNX, known for its reliability, modular microkernel design, and use in embedded systems (like automotive, medical devices, and industrial equipment). The company was acquired by BlackBerry (then called Research In Motion) in 2010. The OS was used as the foundation for the BlackBerry Tablet OS, and later for BlackBerry 10, its next-generation smartphone OS.
Over time, BlackBerry pivoted away from smartphones and repositioned itself as a software and security company, and QNX became one of its core assets, especially in the automotive sector. QNX is the foundational software running in over 255 million vehicles globally, working with every one of the world's top 10 automakers and 24 of the top 25 electric vehicle makers. Now, it is making a concerted push into one of the world's fastest-growing auto markets.
“Until about four or five years ago, we didn’t have much of a direct presence here except through some distributors,” says Dhiraj Handa, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia-Pacific at QNX. “We realized that having a direct presence would help. As we started to grow in Asia (in China, Japan, Korea), the natural extension was to also start to actively engage in India directly”.
That engagement has since accelerated dramatically. What began with a small sales team has evolved into a major investment, highlighted by the establishment of a Center of Excellence for R&D and expert engineering services in Hyderabad. In just two years, the center has grown from a fledgling idea to a team of over 100 engineers, providing both local support for Indian customers and contributing to QNX's global projects.
While QNX is a dominant force in the automotive industry, its technology is also deployed in a variety of other mission-critical sectors, including medical, industrial controls, rail systems, and aerospace. Within the vehicle, its software is the bedrock for a wide array of applications, from digital cockpits and infotainment systems to advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and secure vehicle gateways.
The Great Complexity Shift
The push into India comes as automakers globally grapple with a monumental transformation. The traditional vehicle architecture, a distributed system with hundreds of simple, fixed-function Electronic Control Units (ECUs), is becoming obsolete. The industry is now moving toward centralized computing, where powerful domain controllers manage entire sections of the vehicle, like the cockpit or advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). The final frontier is a vehicle-centralized architecture, with a single High-Performance Compute (HPC) unit acting as the car’s brain.
This shift is piling immense pressure on software. “As you move to domain-centralized and vehicle-centralized architectures, the complexity goes up dramatically,” Handa explains. “You have the emergence of mixed-criticality ECUs, where safety-critical functions like a warning light have to run reliably alongside non-safety infotainment apps on the same chip. This requires a foundational software platform that is secure, safe, and built to manage that complexity”.
QNX positions its software as that essential foundation, the "plumbing" upon which automakers can build their innovative features. The company is seeing a significant trend where automakers are taking control of their software destiny. In the last 18 months, about 67% of QNX's automotive design wins were directly with OEMs, a stark shift from the traditional model where Tier 1 suppliers drove software decisions. "OEMs are becoming, essentially, software companies," Handa notes, adding that major players are hiring thousands of software engineers to bring development in-house.
Taming the Multi-Core Beast with SDP 8.0
QNX officials noted that the company is making a strong bet on a new foundational software platform, SDP 8.0, designed to unlock the full potential of the next generation of automotive hardware. “It’s really a paradigm shift once in a decade,” Handa said, emphasizing that the new platform is engineered specifically to address a massive technological leap happening inside modern vehicles.
At the center of this shift is the evolution of the main computer chips, known as Systems on a Chip (SoCs), that run everything from a car’s digital dashboard to its advanced safety features. For years, these chips were relatively simple, using two or four processing units, or "cores". Now, automakers and their suppliers are rapidly adopting far more powerful and complex chips with 8, 16, or even 32 cores to handle the immense data processing required for features like autonomous driving and immersive in-cabin experiences.
However, harnessing the power of these multi-core chips is a major challenge. Simply adding more cores doesn't automatically guarantee better performance if the underlying software, the operating system, can't manage them efficiently.
This is the problem SDP 8.0 was built to solve. Handa explained that QNX's new platform is designed to scale its performance almost perfectly as more cores are added. He noted that while other solutions might see performance gains level off, QNX’s internal testing shows that SDP 8.0 delivers nearly double the performance when moving from an 8-core to a 16-core chip. This "linear scaling" is crucial for automakers investing heavily in expensive, high-end processors.
"We think SDP-8 is absolutely key to that," Handa stated, referring to the critical need for software that can take full advantage of the performance these advanced chips offer.
The Microkernel Advantage Over Open Source
As software eats the car, the debate between proprietary systems like QNX and open-source alternatives like Automotive Grade Linux is intensifying. QNX argues its core architectural difference gives it an inherent advantage in the high-stakes automotive arena.
“Our entire system is based on a microkernel architecture,” Handa elaborates. “In a microkernel, key system processes run securely outside the very small, protected kernel. If one process crashes, the kernel and other critical processes keep running, which is fundamental for functional safety. This architecture also presents a much smaller attack surface for security threats and makes Over-the-Air (OTA) updates simpler and safer, as you can update a single service without touching the whole system”.
This architectural difference has profound implications for the stringent safety and security certifications required in the automotive industry. Because of its design, QNX's software components are considered "Safety Elements Out of Context," meaning they come pre-certified and don't need to be recertified for every new hardware configuration, saving automakers significant time and money. Handa contends this is a high bar for open-source systems to clear.
"It's very difficult for them (open source rivals) to get safety certified, adhere to all the security requirements," he stated, pointing to the high number of vulnerabilities often found in large, monolithic systems.
QNX's strategy isn't purely defensive. To compete with the accessibility that makes open source attractive, the company launched its "QNX Everywhere" initiative. This program makes the QNX platform widely available for non-commercial activities like early prototyping, university research, and proof-of-concept projects, aiming to build familiarity and expertise within the engineering communit