Apple CarPlay is Designed to Work with BlackBerry’s QNX
BlackBerry’s network this morning experienced an outage in Canada but the Waterloo-based smartphone maker got better publicity in the afternoon after it was revealed that Apple’s recently unveiled CarPlay technology—iOS for vehicle dashboards, essentially—has been designed to play nicely with BlackBery’s QNX operating system, which powers some car infotainment systems.
A spokesperson for BlackBerry confirmed that “a longstanding partnership with Apple” extends to CarPlay and integration between the two systems will be seamless.
Early participating automakers of CarPlay include Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, who will later be followed by BMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Suzuki, and Toyota.
“CarPlay has been designed from the ground up to provide drivers with an incredible experience using their iPhone in the car,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPhone and iOS Product Marketing, earlier this week. “iPhone users always want their content at their fingertips and CarPlay lets drivers use their iPhone in the car with minimized distraction.”
Apple CarPlay is available as an update to iOS 7 and works with the iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5. Compatible vehicles will start shipping later this year, according to Apple.
