John Wall in the QNX garage in Ottawa on Thursday.Keito Newman/The Globe and Mail
John Wall quips that he “came with the building,” when BlackBerry Ltd. BB-T bought Ottawa software company QNX 15 years ago.
BlackBerry, then trying to revive its smartphone business, wanted QNX to build its ultimately doomed BB10 operating system. As senior director of engineering services at QNX at the time, Mr. Wall was doing something else – building software to run in-car infotainment systems – and didn’t want to join the BB10 project, even though his own unit “was a rounding error” to BlackBerry, he said in an interview.
“From 2010 to 2014, nobody was paying attention to me. We weren’t making enough money to be relevant, and BlackBerry was still very much a handset company,” he said.
As BlackBerry’s phone business cratered, Mr. Wall’s unit became more than a rounding error. Today, QNX accounts for most of a rebounding BlackBerry’s market value, with the division generating revenue of US$63.1-million in the second quarter ended Aug. 31 – up 15 per cent year-over-year – and a healthy 32 per cent adjusted operating profit margin.
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QNX’s operating system dominates the “software-defined vehicle” space more than BlackBerry once did in handsets, counting all top 10 automakers as customers. One-fifth of cars built annually are software-defined, and QNX is in 90 per cent of them – 255 million vehicles in all.
Now, 32 years after joining QNX, the low-key, 57-year-old has been named president of the division. Mr. Wall, an electrical engineer by training and previously chief operating officer, replaces Chicago-based Mattias Eriksson.
“John has been the real heart and soul of the QNX business for some time,” said Phil Kurtz, BlackBerry’s chief legal officer. “He’s the name people look up to internally and externally. Now we have a Canadian leading QNX, which has always been a Canadian part of our business, out of its Ottawa home.”
BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo said in an e-mailed statement, “No one knows the embedded software space better than John. For decades he has been an integral part of the QNX business, earning deep respect from employees and building strong relationships with the most influential software leaders globally. His deep understanding of customer needs and industry trends positions QNX to lead the next wave of innovation and achieve new levels of success.”
Mr. Wall's QNX unit accounts for most of rebounding BlackBerry’s market value.Keito Newman/The Globe and Mail
QNX, founded in 1980, is four years older than BlackBerry. It made its name building the nucleus of powerful operating systems; QNX software was embedded in Cisco routers that ran the internet, nuclear power plants and air traffic control systems. It could run continuously for years without a glitch. A customer once told Fortune “the only way to make this software malfunction is to fire a bullet into the computer running it.”
Harman International Industries bought QNX in 2004 to make infotainment systems for high-end cars. Mr. Wall was tapped to lead a new group to build that business.
But after a leveraged buyout fell through in 2007, the financially challenged stereo maker slimmed down. BlackBerry’s then co-CEO Mike Lazaridis thought QNX had the right expertise to rebuild his company’s mobile operating system. BlackBerry bought QNX for $200-million in 2010.
After the BB10 flopped, QNX faced two threats. Apple set up a lab next door, raiding its talent to build an autonomous electric vehicle. More than 60 QNX employees defected, including founder Dan Dodge. Apple wooed Mr. Wall but he preferred working with customers to joining an internal engineering team.
Meanwhile, car-makers were adopting Google’s Android for their infotainment needs. Rather than fight another losing battle against Silicon Valley’s mightiest, Mr. Wall’s group pivoted in the 2010s to build other systems deep inside increasingly digitized vehicles.
Mr. Wall aims to challenge rival Linux by making QNX available free for non-commercial use by university programming students to expand its adoption.Keito Newman/The Globe and Mail
It developed advanced driver-assistance and safety systems including lane-keep assist functions and, later, broadened its platform to build a foundational platform underpinning the digital cockpit, instrument clusters, surround-view sensor systems – and even infotainment applications.
Revenues initially dipped but the plan worked. QNX generated revenue of US$236-million in its fiscal year ended Feb. 28, up from US$130-million in 2021.
Alex Oyler, director of SBD Automotive, a Michigan-based automotive research and consulting firm, credits Mr. Wall for being “instrumental in that execution. He understands how his product is used, the challenges that QNX’s customers face and has done a wonderful job” ensuring QNX helps solve its customers’ problems.
Mr. Wall aims to challenge rival Linux by making QNX available free for non-commercial use by university programming students to expand its adoption. QNX is working on a next-generation in-car platform and expanding into markets including industrial automation, robotics, medical, rail, aerospace and defence.
“I live and breathe QNX, our customers, our technology,” Mr. Wall said. “I believe strongly in this team being one of the best in the world for the software we build. I’m happy the board and the executives saw that in me – the competency, the passion. I’m not going to let them down.”