PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
BlackBerry looks on course for a return to its glory days as share prices jump significantly. Shares jumped by 10 per cent yesterday, extending the Canadian firms recent gains after it made significant investments in both the security market and automotive trade. As a result, in the past two months BlackBerry’s stock has surged by nearly 70 per cent as investors like what they see.
The stock hit a four-year high of C$15.82 in Toronto. By midday yesterday some 4 million shares had changed hands, more than double the three-month daily average.
And following deals with automakers and other business wins, researchers at Citron said it expects BlackBerry resurgence to continue. "When Wall Street shifts its frame of expectations toward the future, and gets over their legacy business, watch out," a spokesman for Citron said.
BlackBerry has abandoned its former business model focused on the sale of its own phones. Instead the company has stepped up its security sales and has begun selling software for securing mobile devices and automobiles and cyber security consulting services. In particular, Citron said it has high expectations for sales of BlackBerry’s QNX secure industrial operating system. QNX is currently installed in more than 60 million cars, where it is used as an entertainment and telematics system. The firm is now poised to tie up more deals in the automotive world, in particular in relation to autonomous driving.
Last month a Macquarie financial analyst said that BlackBerry was working with at least two car manufacturers to build a security service that would remotely protect vehicles from computer viruses and would alert drivers if they were in danger of attack.
