Blackberry in the Middle, with Ford Pulling Ahead

Remember when a Blackberry was the cool phone to have? I'm sure Blackberry does and that was only eight or nine years ago. Well, once the entire world started its heated affair with the Apple iphone, Blackberry was left alone to lick its wounds. Even government employees get iphones instead of the Blackberry, but now the company is a player in the driverless business and it still has to deal with Apple.

Stealing away employees

Apple has a driverless software operation in Canada, near Ottawa, where Apple is poaching engineering and management talent from Blackberry subsidiary QNX. Lots of talent. Ouch and Apple is way far from its Silicon Valley home. What exactly does it even have going on in the frozen north? Supposedly Apple will be developing an operating system for driverless vehicles.

Model T taxibot?

While Apple is pissing off Blackberry, Ford is making a partner. The car company, I mean mobility company, will be expanding use of Blackberry's secure operating system for driverless cars. (Here's another article; this one has more of a smartphone focus.)

Ford is planning on rolling out driverless cars for sale and shared use taxibot services in 2021 and the company wasting no time in preparing. Ford just hired a vice president of autonomous vehicle solutions, Laura Merling, to serve under the company's smart mobility chairman. 

Current count in the Golden State

Is the count now 19 or 20 for companies with California permits to do driverless testing? NextEV is being added to the list and opening an 85,000 square foot facility that will have 400 employees. Lots of investment. NextEV is based in China and is called the Chinese Tesla counterpart. There is tons of Chinese money coming to the US for driverless development, both in Silicon Valley and in Michigan.