Dan Dodge: From the founder of QNX to the head of the BlackBerry automotive software, to the head of Apple Project Titan

Today, Bloomberg released the news: QNX's former CEO and founder Dan Dodge joined the Apple Autopilot Project and is responsible for the development of Apple’s "Project Titan" automatic car project. After the news was announced, many media hailed Apple's move to dig a wall as a wise person, because it was a very talented person. How great is Dan Dodge? Today, Xiao Bian gave everyone the eighty-eighth general who was captured by Apple.

Dodge's story of the storm, but also from the student's time. In 1980, Dodge was a student at the University of Waterloo in Canada. At that time, he founded Quantum Software Systems with his friend Dodge. They wrote a system called QUNIX (Quick UNIX) that can run on an IBM PC. Later, AT&T sent a lawyer's letter and they changed the name of the company to QNX.

This is the birth of QNX, it comes from the hands of two students. Later, no one expected that QNX would be out of control on the way.

In 1982, the first commercial release of QNX was used for the Intel 8088 processor. Since then, for more than 30 years, QNX has created its own space in the embedded real-time operating system with its unique microkernel architecture.

The positioning of QNX is an embedded system developer with powerful capabilities and extremely wide application. The music and media features of the Porsche sports car, the control system of the nuclear power plant and the US Army driverless Crusher tank, and the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook tablet all have it to provide the system.

Now, DNX has become the largest operating system supplier in the automotive industry. According to incomplete data, QNX has a market share of 75% in the automotive market. At present, QNX systems are used in more than 230 vehicle types worldwide. The well-known automotive electronic platforms such as Harmanbeck, Delphi, Continental, General Electric, and Aisin are all Built on QNX system. Almost all major global car brands (including Acura, Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Daimler, Dodge, Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Puma, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Jeep, Lancia, Mazda, Mercedes, Mini BMW, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, Pondik, Porsche, Saab, Saturn, Ssangyong, Toyota, and Volkswagen all use QNX technology-based systems.

In addition, QNX works closely with companies such as General Electric, Alstom, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, and NASA to play an active role in rail transit, medical devices, smart grids, and aerospace.

Therefore, the company founded by this Dan Dodge student is walking on the road.

In the history of the development of QNX30 for more than two years, there have been two acquisitions, all participated by Dan Dodge. The last time came from Harman International Industrial, a manufacturer of audio equipment, and once it was the well-known BlackBerry maker RIM.

On October 27th, 2004, Harman acquired QNX with a value of US$2.8 billion. QNX is now incorporated into the Harman Group and partners with Revel, Lexicon, and Mark Levinson. Harman is the world's leading manufacturer of audio products. It is a global leader in the development and manufacturing of acoustics. Harman's audio and infotainment systems are used in more than 20 million cars on the road.

On April 14, 2010, QNX was acquired by BlackBerry maker RIM. Therefore, after joining the American family of Harman, QNX returned to Canada. QNX mainly develops operating systems used in automobiles and communication equipment. The main business of Harman International is car audio and video entertainment equipment. The transaction will enable RIM, QNX and Harman Industries to find a space for collaboration between smartphones and car audio entertainment systems.

In fact, QNX was well-known to the industry before it was incorporated into the Harman Group in 2004. With the help of the Harman Group, QNX has also made rapid progress in the automotive industry: including open source operating systems, and authorized users to increase to 17 million. An infotainment platform based on Adobe Flash man-machine interface, the world's first 4G LTE car infotainment system. Therefore, RIM's acquisition of QNX has also become the first mobile phone company to enter the automotive infotainment system.

Strategy Analytics analyst Roger Clanctot said:

QNX has prepared for the future automotive electronic infotainment system.

QH China sales manager Ha Junyuan said:

As an enterprise-class telecommunications operator, RIM has an absolute advantage in value-added. With the acquisition of QNX, RIM will directly enter the online entertainment and online value-added services of car entertainment. This will become RIM's biggest advantage. After all, RIM can directly use QNX's experience in vehicle-mounted systems to achieve a seamless connection between cars and BlackBerry mobile phones.

These two acquisitions have helped QNX increase its visibility and expand its market, which is crucial for the development of QNX. After being acquired by the BlackBerry, Dan Dodge's position became the head of BlackBerry’s former automotive software division. However, Dan Dodge, who led the QDX in one hand, chose to leave this "parent-child" in December last year.

Today, the news revealed that Dan Dodge had joined Apple’s autopilot program earlier this year. This major job-hopping message has been kept secret. It is reported that Dodge is responsible for the research and development of Apple's "Project Titan" auto car project after joining. It is directly responsible to the hardware engineer and former Apple executive Bob Mansfield. Since the latter took over the Apple auto team, the strategy of Apple's car project has changed.

Apple’s car project now focuses on the development of driverless systems, although it still has not given up its efforts to design Apple's own car. This means that Apple may eventually cooperate with car manufacturers or acquire a car manufacturer instead of building cars themselves. Although Apple spokesman declined to comment, the outside world can already guess Apple’s unmanned vehicle strategy.

Apple has assembled hundreds of engineers to work on automotive design. The goal is to launch Apple cars as early as 2020. However, this goal has been continuously frustrated, including the departure of many people, technical delays, and confusion. Therefore, it is not surprising that Apple is digging around for autopilot-related talent. It is reported that Todd Gray resigned from Ford to join Apple in May last year. He is responsible for the development of a system for manufacturing aluminum bodies for the F-150 trucks at Ford. His colleague Aindrea Campbell used to be the team manager of the Ford Body Construction Engineer responsible for the development of lightweight materials for vehicles such as the F-150. She joined Apple last September. The addition of Dan Dodge has made Apple’s automatic driving project team even stronger.

Xiao Bian has stated earlier that QNX has a market share of 75% in the automotive market. Currently, QNX is used in more than 230 types of vehicles around the world. This shows that QNX has a lot of experience in the automotive industry. Therefore, QNX has a large Dan Dodge. Can provide strong support for Apple.

Now, Apple is continuing to “grab” the auto company in order to recruit more experts who specialize in designing automotive manufacturing systems. Apple has recruited two Ford engineers who specialize in aluminum vehicle research and development.

Now, Apple is setting up an R&D center near the headquarters of QNX in Kanata, a suburb of the Canadian capital, Ottawa. Previously, Apple set up an office in Boston to use a large number of local voice recognition experts, and now its office in Cannata will help Apple make full use of the local automotive software talent pool.

Undoubtedly, with Dan Dodge, Apple will walk more smoothly on the road to autonomous driving. But the autopilot is a long road, whether Apple's self-driving car will be launched as scheduled, whether it will be as cool as other Apple products, the time will be witnesses.