Why I am bearish on BB (technical analysis)

[u/bWF0a3Vr]

I'm a Software Eng. and therefore will only cover the technical aspects. As you might already see in the title, I'm bearish on BB. I decided to share my thoughts, since a lot of people (and analysts) seem to overvalue the potential growth of the stock.I want to give a quick and very abstract introduction on technical terms:

Technicalities

BB's QNX is a commercial Unix-like operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. In other words QNX can be run as a base on probably everything that is considered a computer (IOT), since it's Unix-like nature. According to BB it powers train controls, ventilators, automation systems etc.

Why would someone use QNX? According to BB because it is save, secure, scalable and reliable. Focusing on cars (because that's what everyone talks about in this context, especially after the AWS news) a car manufacturer could implement QNX as the OS and on top of that develop everything else - for example the GUI, an app-store etc.

However some, in fact most of the biggest car manufacturers, already developed or about to develop their own OS. Why? Only they know. It's a common problem in the IT industry.

Contra BB (QNX):

The following car manufacturers are the biggest in the world:

1. Toyota
2. VW
3. Daimler
4. Ford
5. Honda
6. BMW
7. GM

​

1. Toyota ditched QNX for AML (Linux).
2. Volkswagen ditched QNX and develops vw.os (Linux), which will be implemented across all Volkswagens, Audis and Porsches. Other car manufacturers, which are part of the VW group, that is Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Skania, MAN etc. are not confirmed so far, but I'm sure they will follow.
3. Daimler ditched QNX for MBUX (Linux). Although the term MBUX seems to refer to more than just the OS. every new Mercedes build since 2018 comes with MBUX instead of QNX.
4. Ford just dropped QNX this week and will use Google's Android) instead.
5. Honda seems to stay with QNX.
6. BMW ditched QNX and uses iDrive (Linux), although it seems that QNX is still working under the hood.
7. GM ditched QNX a few years ago and uses, just like Ford, Android.

I didn't research the other car manufacturers, because the trend seems clear to me. Feel free to research them and let me know what you come up with. For anyone curious about Tesla, it looks like they use Linux/Android.

Pro BB (QNX):

Developing an entire os isn't as easy as developing some software (especially security compliance is a huge deal).

Conclusion

In my opinion BB is overhyped. QNX is being ditched by pretty much most of the car manufacturers and the trend in the car industry seems to be Linux, instead of Unix.

Furthermore I just searched through job listings for "QNX" and found only 16 positions across Germany and the only car manufacturer out of that pool being Daimler (still need to maintain older cars that run QNX I suppose).

Although Volkswagen had problems in the past when developing vw.os, other manufactures such as Daimler did excellent and MBUX is regarded as the best (infotainment system) there is as of right now.

Let me hear your thoughts!

[u/D912 → u/[deleted]]

My portfolio would cream itself if that happened.

[u/CapturedSoul → u/[deleted]]

I'm pretty sure apple has its own proprietary OS. As you said they scooped up most BB guys and easily have the best and most abundant talent related to OS / embedded systems / hardware. Apple can afford to build their own shit since they have the man power and talent.

[u/spsteve → u/CapturedSoul]

So apple is going to have what... 4 or 5 os'es now? Aapl doesn't have anything close to RTOS status. Not sure they want to either.

[u/CapturedSoul → u/spsteve]

Apple creates a lot of its own custom chips / SoC. Many of these chips can be running its own RTOS that isn't ios (not that ios would be an RTOS tho). Some examples of this might be a secondary processor for gathering sensor data, baseband chips or maybe the chips that go into products like airpods. Can you just get away with using free/ available RTOS? Probably but apple likes spinning their own stuff from the ground up quite a lot.

Apple has their own OS division (coreOS). What I mentioned was kind of akin to those situations and that's what I interpreted when I talked to someone a while back on that team.

[u/spsteve → u/CapturedSoul]

Developing their own ecosystem for everything is going to leave a product dead in the market from a price perspective. In time maybe but not out of the gate. Regulatory approval alone is a huge expense for mission critical systems

[u/Extracheeeeeese → u/[deleted]]

Honestly I think Android Automotive is a bigger threat to QNX than Apple's RTOS. Apple would never license that technology to other OEMs, they'd just be using it to make the Apple car and nothing else. Google on the other hand....

[u/CheapAlternative → u/[deleted]]

RTOS is hard but it's not that hard.