BlackBerry has maintained its position with the US government as the go-to choice for secure smartphones, thanks to a new deal with the Defence Department that sent shares skyrocketing.
The Defence Information Systems Agency (DISA) will be adding a whopping 80,000 BlackBerry phones to a new management network at the end of January, which will handle unclassified documents and employ a military app store. In contrast, only 1,800 Google Android and Apple iOS devices will be used.
The big business recovery
BlackBerry's established position with big businesses has given it a lifeline that it desperately needs to hang on to. It has attempted to expand beyond its comfort zone with the keyboardless Z10 and Z30, but its new CEO John Chen has promised to return the company to its roots by bringing more devices with physical keyboards to the market.
Bloomberg cited a report by Citron Research released earlier this month, which highlighted BlackBerry as a good investment with "a healthy balance sheet" and "ample liquidity." It said that shares should be worth $15 (£9, AU$17), just over one and a half times the current value, so there is clearly still room for growth.
The new government deal has given BlackBerry a major boost, with stock prices rising by as much as 12 per cent. Shares at BlackBerry were up by $0.85 (£0.51, AU$0.96) to $9.93 (£6, AU$11.20), an increase of 9.36 per cent, at the time of writing.