According to media reports, Research In Motion Ltd will soon be ready to license its new BlackBerry 10 operating system to other manufacturers.

The new platform is in the final stages of testing, and RIM is now considering how other companies may be able to use it in a range of products, Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg News.

Bloomberg quoted Thorsten Heins as saying, "QNX is already licensed across the automotive sector, we could do that with BB10 if we chose to," Heins said in New York. "The platform can be licensed."

Waterloo, Ontario based RIM, whose BlackBerry devices have lost ground to rivals like Apple Inc's iPhone and a range of devices that run on Google Inc's Android software, is set to launch its own line of devices that run on BB10 in the first quarter of 2013.

According to financial.post.com, the BlackBerry 10 represents a fresh start for RIM, which abandoned its old software to create the operating system. The new line-up uses technology from its 2010 acquisition of QNX Software Systems, which RIM bought from Harman International Industries Inc. for US$200-million. The underlying software has been used by companies ranging from Cisco Systems Inc. to General Electric Co. to Caterpillar Inc.