BlackBerry Limited (‘BlackBerry’) provides intelligent software and services to enterprises, governments and leading OEMs around the world.
The company’s products enable more than 255 million vehicles and secure 17 of the G20 governments. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company has two core divisions, each addressing large and growing market opportunities.
The company’s QNX division is a leader in embedded software, where the company is the world’s leading automotive foundational software supp...
BlackBerry Limited (‘BlackBerry’) provides intelligent software and services to enterprises, governments and leading OEMs around the world.
The company’s products enable more than 255 million vehicles and secure 17 of the G20 governments. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company has two core divisions, each addressing large and growing market opportunities.
The company’s QNX division is a leader in embedded software, where the company is the world’s leading automotive foundational software supplier. Its customers include leading automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers that use its products in vehicles, as well as top medical OEMs. The company’s solutions are implemented into all the top 10 automotive OEMs, top 7 Tier 1 suppliers, 24 of the 25 top EV OEMs, and 9 of the 10 top medical OEMs.
The company’s Secure Communications division delivers operational resiliency with a comprehensive, highly secure, and extensively certified product portfolio for mobile fortification, mission-critical communications, and critical events management.
The company has three material subsidiaries, all of which are wholly-owned, directly or indirectly, by the company, in each case as at February 28, 2025: BlackBerry Corporation; BlackBerry UK Limited; and Secusmart GmbH.
Cylance Sale
On February 3, 2025, the company completed the sale of its Cylance endpoint security assets and related liabilities to Arctic Wolf Network, Inc. (‘Arctic Wolf’).
Products and Services: Addressing market needs and opportunities
The company has a rich pedigree in innovation and has developed a range of products and services that assist customers in addressing their needs as their industries evolve, which are structured in three divisions: QNX, Secure Communications, and Licensing.
QNX
The QNX division consists of QNX, BlackBerry Radar, BlackBerry Certicom, and BlackBerry IVY.
QNX is an industry leader whose high-performance foundational software enables major automakers and industrial giants alike to unlock transformative applications, drive new revenue streams, and launch innovative business models, all without sacrificing safety, security, and reliability. QNX is a trusted supplier of operating systems, hypervisors, frameworks, and development tools that help reduce hardware dependency while enabling new possibilities in high-performance computing, standards-based virtualization technologies, and cloud enablement.
QNX offers a growing portfolio of safety-certified, secure, and reliable platform solutions and is focused on achieving design wins with automotive OEMs, Tier 1 vendors, and automotive semiconductor suppliers. These solutions include the BlackBerry QNX real-time operating system, QNX Hypervisor for Safety, and QNX Software Development Platform (SDP), as well as other products designed to alleviate the challenges of compliance with ISO 26262, the automotive industry’s functional safety standard. The QNX pre-certified microkernel operating system is specifically tailored for safety-critical embedded systems and toolchains that are pre-qualified for building these systems. The QNX Hypervisor for Safety prevents safety systems from the potential impact of malfunction in other systems. These products help drive a faster time to market and also reduce developer friction.
QNX is also a preferred supplier of embedded systems for companies building medical devices, rail systems, industrial automation solutions, hardware security modules, building automation systems, green energy solutions, and other mission-critical applications. QNX collaborates closely with customers to understand their specific requirements and more quickly and effectively develop solutions to meet their evolving needs.
BlackBerry Radar is a family of asset monitoring and telematics solutions for the transportation and logistics industry. The BlackBerry Radar solution includes devices and secure cloud-based dashboards for tracking containers, trailers, chassis, flatbeds, and heavy machinery, for reporting locations and sensor data, and for enabling custom alerts and fleet management analytics.
BlackBerry Certicom leverages patented elliptic curve cryptography to provide device security, anti-counterfeiting, and product authentication solutions to protect vehicles, critical infrastructure, and IoT deployments from product counterfeiting, re-manufacturing, and unauthorized network access.
BlackBerry IVY is an emerging intelligent vehicle data platform that allows automakers to safely access a vehicle’s sensor data, normalize it, and apply machine learning at the edge to generate and share predictive insights and inferences. Automakers and developers can use this information to create responsive in-vehicle applications and services that enhance driver and passenger experiences. The QNX division also provides engineering consulting services, including services to assist OEM customers to bring their products to market on time, as well as services to ensure compliance with relevant functional safety standards.
Secure Communications
The Secure Communications division consists of BlackBerry UEM solutions, BlackBerry SecuSUITE, and BlackBerry AtHoc.
The company’s endpoint management offerings include BlackBerry UEM, BlackBerry Dynamics, BlackBerry Workspaces, and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Enterprise. BlackBerry UEM employs a containerized approach to manage and secure devices, third-party, and custom applications, identity, content, and endpoints across all leading operating systems, as well as providing regulatory compliance tools. BlackBerry Dynamics offers a best-in-class development platform and secure container for mobile applications, including the company’s own enterprise applications, such as BlackBerry Work and BlackBerry Connect for secure collaboration. BlackBerry Workspaces is a secure Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) solution. BBM Enterprise is an enterprise-grade secure instant messaging solution for messaging, voice, and video.
BlackBerry SecuSUITE is a certified, multi-OS voice and text messaging solution with advanced encryption, anti-eavesdropping, and continuous authentication capabilities, providing a maximum level of security on conventional mobile devices for government and businesses.
BlackBerry AtHoc is a secure, networked critical event management solution that enables people, devices, and organizations to exchange critical information in real-time during business continuity and life safety operations. The platform securely connects with a diverse set of endpoints to distribute emergency mass notifications, improve personnel accountability, and facilitate the bidirectional collection and sharing of data within and between organizations.
The Secure Communications division also provides enterprise consulting services, including platform-agnostic strategies to address mobility-based challenges, providing expert deployment support, end-to-end delivery (from system design to user training), application consulting, and experienced project management.
Licensing
The Licensing division is responsible for the management and monetization of the company’s global patent portfolio. The patent portfolio continues to provide a competitive advantage in the company’s core product areas, as well as providing leverage in the development of future technologies and licensing programs in both core and adjacent vertical markets. The company owns rights to an array of patented and patent-pending technologies, which include, but are not limited to, operating systems, networking infrastructure, acoustics, messaging, enterprise software, automotive subsystems, cybersecurity, cryptography, and wireless communications. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 6,300 worldwide patents and applications.
Go to Market
The company primarily generates revenue from the licensing of enterprise software and sales of associated services, including its QNX embedded software platforms, solutions, and services, Secure Communications solutions and services, and technology licensing. The company focuses on strategic industries with vertical-specific use cases, including regulated enterprise markets, such as automotive, government, financial services, transportation, healthcare, and other adjacent markets where high-performance, foundational embedded software platforms and solutions are important, such as robotics, medical devices, and industrial automation (‘General Embedded Market’ or ‘GEM’).
QNX
The company licenses QNX and BlackBerry Certicom technology and provides professional engineering services to OEM customers in the automotive and GEM software markets via a direct sales force and indirectly through channel partnerships. The licenses are primarily monetized as royalties on units shipped and through project development seats, tools, and maintenance fees.
The company markets and sells its BlackBerry Radar secure asset monitoring products and services to enterprise users through its internal sales force, as well as through third-party distribution channels.
Secure Communications
The company licenses its Secure Communications products, including complementary third-party applications, through a geographically-dispersed direct sales force, value-added resellers, and alliance partners. The company continues to build its global partner programs to bolster its direct sales and marketing efforts.
Seasonality
The company experiences seasonal patterns in its revenue, primarily due to QNX customers placing a higher percentage of orders in the second half of the fiscal year as compared to the first half of the fiscal year. This gives rise, in turn, to similar seasonality in the company’s operating margin and operating cash flow, the latter of which is also impacted by variable incentive plan payments in the first half of the fiscal year (year ended February 28, 2025).
Competition
The QNX division competes principally with other providers of embedded foundational software, including Linux open-source operating systems.
Third Party Software Developers
The primary development platform for BlackBerry QNX-based systems is the QNX Software Development Platform, which includes the QNX Neutrino real-time operating system and the QNX Tool Suite featuring the QNX Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and the Momentics integrated development environment. The QNX SDP is complemented by a portfolio of products, including QNX Hypervisor, QNX OS for Safety, QNX Hypervisor for Safety, QNX Sound, QNX Cabin, IVY, and other QNX products.
The company offers the BlackBerry Development Platform, an enterprise-grade toolset that enables application developers and ISVs to build secure, powerful, and customized solutions for almost every use case and to commercialize them on the BlackBerry Marketplace for Enterprise Software, which contains over 100 enterprise applications and solutions. The platform includes the BlackBerry Dynamics software development kit (‘SDK’), which allows developers to integrate BlackBerry security into their enterprise applications, resulting in a managed application where corporate data is isolated and protected at all times, both while at rest and in transit. The platform also includes SDKs for BlackBerry UEM, BlackBerry Workspaces, BlackBerry AtHoc, and other products.
In addition, the company maintains the BlackBerry AtHoc Development Partner Program, which invites partners to integrate with the BlackBerry AtHoc service and allows them to create alerts based on more event types or to leverage alerting capabilities based on critical events from within other systems.
Intellectual Property
Although the company applies for patent protection primarily in Canada, Europe, and the United States, the company has filed, and will continue to file, patent applications in other countries where there exists a strategic technological or business reason to do so. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 6,300 worldwide patents and applications.
Environmental, Social, and Governance
The company has formalized a number of policies to reflect its commitment to responsible business practices, including a Privacy Policy, Supplier Code of Conduct, Human Rights Policy, Supplier Diversity Policy, Health and Safety Policy, and Environment and Sustainability Policy, and periodically issues an ESG report.
The company collects and uses a wide variety of information for various purposes in its business, including to help ensure the integrity of its services and to provide features and functionality to customers. This aspect of the company’s business is subject to a broad array of evolving privacy and data protection laws, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, the proposed Canadian Consumer Privacy Protection Act, regional privacy frameworks, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Privacy Framework, and national and state laws within the United States, including the California Privacy Rights Act. These laws impose strict operational requirements and can provide for significant penalties for non-compliance.
The company is also subject to numerous international trade laws and regulations, including, without limitation, tariffs, trade sanctions, export controls, and technology transfer restrictions, as well as anti-corruption legislation, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act.
The U.S. Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also requires the company to comply with certain obligations with respect to the use of so-called ‘conflict minerals’.
Research and Development
The company’s adjusted research and development expenses decreased to $103.5 million in fiscal 2025.
History
The company was founded in 1984. It was incorporated under the Business Corporations Act (Ontario) in 1984. The company was formerly known as Research In Motion Limited and changed its name to BlackBerry Limited in 2013.