Bloomberg reports that Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins has said that the BlackBerry 10 operating system, which is still in development at RIM, will soon be ready to license to other hardware manufacturers. Heins however has not confirmed whether this will actually take place.
BlackBerry 10 is based off of QNX, which has found applications in numerous places including the automotive and military industries, and is reportedly in the final testing phases. Heins said in an interview that “QNX is already licensed across the automotive sector –we could do that with BB10 if we chose to. The platform can be licensed.”
RIM seems to be looking at ways that the recently delayed BlackBerry 10 can be utilised in places other than the smartphone environment. Heins said “Smartphones are a part of our business, but we’re looking way beyond this.”
Yesterday’s comments seem to indicate that RIM is giving serious thought to licensing the new OS, supporting previous statements from the company’s CEO to that effect.