It seems like only yesterday...

By Megan Alink, Director of Marketing Communications for Automotive

What were you doing on September 14, 1999? It was likely an inauspicious day for most people, but for QNX, the date represented our official entry into the automotive market:

Don’t get me wrong — QNX was no tentative newcomer on the scene. After all, we were marking almost two decades in the embedded software business. QNX OS technology was already powering mission-critical systems for credit card processing, energy generation, healthcare, mail sorting, precision manufacturing, mining, security, and warehouse automation worldwide. (Whew!) But it was time to take that reliability and flexibility to more markets, ones with needs similar to our existing customer base. Enter automotive. (And we did.)

Today, we are pleased to be able to say that QNX software is found in more than 60 million vehicles on the road. In telematics systems like OnStar. In infotainment services like Volkswagen's RNS 850 GPS navigation system and Ford SYNC 3. In the digital instrument clusters of the state-of-the-art Audi TT and Mercedes S-Class Coupé.

60 million is a very big number. Obviously, we wouldn’t have reached this milestone without the support of our Tier 1 customers who build QNX into their systems every day, the 40+ automakers who choose these QNX-based systems, and our ecosystem of automotive partners who enrich our offering with their market-leading innovations. We want to thank all of these companies for the exciting and challenging opportunities they give us. Here’s to the next 60 million!