[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)] Few people now remember BlackBerry, which once dominated the market for smartphones with physical keyboards before the iPhone arrived. Many people also ask whether BlackBerry still exists.

BlackBerry has faded from many people’s memories, but it still exists as a company. More than merely surviving, it provides products that affect many people’s lives, often without them knowing it. It is not selling smartphones. BlackBerry exited the smartphone business long ago. Pushed out of the smartphone market by Apple, it later shifted its focus to software.

ONX, an in-vehicle software product, is one of the paths BlackBerry chose after leaving smartphones. It was once seen inside the company as not much of a presence, but it has now emerged as a key contributor in turning BlackBerry, which many thought was dead, into a high-profit company.

ONX is an in-vehicle operating system. It offers driver-assistance functions such as collision warnings, blind-spot alerts, adaptive cruise control, pedestrian detection and steering drivers back when they drift out of their lane.

BlackBerry QNX has a larger presence in the auto industry than ever, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. QNX is already installed in about 275 million vehicles, and as cars add more computing functions, ONX, a simple real-time operating system designed not to fail, is trusted among major global automakers, the WSJ said.

BlackBerry’s results are rising thanks to QNX. QNX now accounts for half of BlackBerry’s total revenue. QNX also enabled BlackBerry to post profits for four straight quarters for the first time since the period when it competed with Apple’s iPhone.

BlackBerry shares have jumped 50 percent since it released an impressive quarterly report last month. The stock is still 96 percent below its peak, but the company appears to show its own confidence about a revival. BlackBerry’s CEO said on a conference call after the earnings release, "The BlackBerry story is now a new growth story."

BlackBerry acquired QNX in 2010. It was part of efforts to secure a next-generation growth engine. But at the time, BlackBerry was in such difficult circumstances that it was hard to do much about it. Even with QNX, it did not look like much would change.

After being acquired by BlackBerry, many QNX engineers were reassigned to mobile OS development, and some stayed on to continue developing in-vehicle software.

Because the company had little interest, the QNX team was able to focus on software development without much interference.

With no special competition in the in-vehicle software market at the time, the QNX team was able to make notable progress in infotainment systems before leading Silicon Valley tech companies entered the field.

Even so, the atmosphere changed completely as big tech companies entered. Google introduced its own Android infotainment system, and Apple recruited QNX engineers to develop cars. It did not look as if BlackBerry could withstand big tech’s push with only the advantage it had secured by starting early when there was little competition. It seemed as if the fate that had left BlackBerry reeling under pressure from the iPhone might fall on it once again.

In that situation, BlackBerry made another bold choice in 2014. Instead of competing with big tech over infotainment systems, it shifted direction to focus more on core software inside vehicles. That was the birth of the current in-vehicle operating system. The company said it had no alternative but to go deeper into cars.

Judging by results alone, the transformation was a masterstroke. BlackBerry QNX, embedded deep inside cars, is now spreading into medical devices, industrial automation and robotics. QNX technology is also being used in surgical robots and more than 10 medical devices.

Recent share moves suggest investors also view positively BlackBerry’s expansion of the QNX ecosystem beyond automobiles. Attention is focused on whether BlackBerry, which nearly died because of smartphones, can keep growing into a software company that plays a key role in hardware where safety is extremely important and human lives are at stake.