On  July 22nd, 1999 QNX Software Systems and phase 5 digital products announced a strategic alliance that would have become an alternative to the official Amiga solution of the time (MMC, Linux, et-al). The agreement between the two companies was a result of the abandoned alliance between QSSL and Amiga a few months earlier. QSSL were no longer the official Amiga partner, but they still recognised that the Amiga would form an ideal starting point for their big push into the desktop market. Anxious to gain market share, QSSL investigated a partnership with other Amiga developers, finding phase 5 more than willing to become their hardware partner in an attack on the Amiga community. Dan Dodge, CTO at QNX Software Systems commented in the press announcement,

"Amiga developers will benefit in at least two ways. First, they can use their existing Amiga computers to develop next-generation multimedia applications based on the QNX Neutrino OS. QNX application development will be completely self-hosted; no PCs required. Second, they can run their legacy Amiga applications and new QNX applications simultaneously, thanks to a powerful 68k emulator from phase 5, which will provide Amiga OS 3.x support."

As part of the deal, Phase 5 would produce a protoype of the new Blizzard and Cyberstorn G4 boards that were  in development (due for release during the fourth quarter of 1999). These would be sent to QSSL, who would use it to port their Neutrino OS. Finally the QNX OS would be released free-of-charge as a 'gift' to the Amiga community. It was indicated that the OS would be executable on all Phase5 PowerPC accelerators  (603, 604, and G4).

It was hoped that the two companies could channel a section of the Amiga market into their own, namely the AMIRAGE K2 and the consumer version of QNX. As events turned out, they would be successful gaining a significant part of the Amiga market when Gateway-Amiga cancelled the Amiga MCC. As a result of this, the Phoenix group was set up to devise methods of promoting QNX in the desktop market.

Unfortunately, the QNX for PowerUP port was never released, with the untimely demise of Phase 5 at the beginning of 2000.

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