RIM chief says BlackBerry 10 could be licensed by handset rivals

Research in Motion's upcoming operating system, BlackBerry 10, could soon be made available for non-BlackBerry devices, according to the company's chief executive Thorsten Heins.

Heins told Bloomberg that QNX, the software that BlackBerry 10 is based on, is "already licensed across the automotive sector... we could do that with BlackBerry 10 if we chose to."

"The platform can be licensed," he added -- but did not confirm the software would be licensed, however. Samsung, which was recently rumored to be considering using BlackBerry 10, said last week it had not considered buying any licenses for the software.