Why is Blackberry Suddenly So Hot Again in 2021?

BlackBerry is the second-most cited stock on Reddit’s WallStreetBets page over the past 24 hours, behind AMC and ahead of GameStop.

BlackBerry shares surged as the Reddit retail-trading crowd boosted its interest in the security-software provider.

The Waterloo, Ontario, company is the second-most cited stock on Reddit’s WallStreetBets page over the past 24 hours, with 487 mentions, Benzinga reports, quoting the investment-data analyst Quiver Quantitative.

Why is this name that nearly everybody knows, but who haven't been on top of an industry since before 2006, suddenly on everyone's lips again?

Arguably the biggest mobile device failure story is the fall of Blackberry from its position of utter handheld dominance in the mid-2000s. Every professional at that time wanted a Blackberry, clobbering their coworkers to get their hands on the latest “Crackberry.” Then smartphones with touch keyboards (including one from another company named after a fruit) appeared and people dropped Blackberry faster than Sony pulling a James Franco film out of theaters.

What’s Going On Now?

Blackberry stock is shooting higher and higher. Repeated buyout rumors keep appearing. Speculators are taking major positions. It feels like 2006 again. I feel like I should brush up on my Borat expressions and go check my Myspace account. It seems reports of Blackberry’s death were greatly exaggerated. Then there is the familiar r/WSB "Short Squeeze" speculation.

ATTN: Anyone Shorting Blackberry Today, It's Not the Same Company You Remember

Despite all of the missteps over the last 10-15 years, Blackberry didn’t fumble everything. Like a kid who just remembered he’d invested his paper route money in Bitcoin 15 years ago, Blackberry did some really smart things a long time ago that are making it a very intriguing buy right now. First, there are the patents. A lot of patents. Many for things that were ahead of their time. Blackberry’s spot in the early smart-device space enabled it to buy and or develop some very ahead-of-their time patents that it still holds to this day. In the smartphone world, patents have two ways of being valuable. First, they can allow someone to develop technology and functions that are protected from imitation by others. The second, less friendly, use is to use patent ownership to sue competitors over existing products that exhibit certain features. If you win, you either force your competition to pull the products or pay millions of dollars in fines and penalties. Samsung has proven exceedingly effective at the latter against Apple, and this just might be what’s up their sleeve. 

The Billion-Dollar Blackberry Asset You’ve Never Heard Of 

Blackberry also owns a technology you probably never heard of, but one you use every time you drive your recent model car from Ford, GM, Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, or Maserati, with an on-board computer. The technology is called QNX, it’s a Unix-like real-time operating system designed for embedded systems. QNX was developed in the 1980s, and, prior to being acquired by Blackberry, was owned for many years by Harman International, who make vehicle entertainment systems and on-board navigation. This kinship with a vehicle equipment manufacturer helped QNX sneak its way into some 50 million automobiles on the road today, and it shows no signs of slowing down. QNX is special because it’s simply architected, incredibly compact and rock-solid stable. These are qualities prized by manufacturers of on-board or embedded systems. You don’t want your anti-lock brake system to suddenly say “Rebooting, please wait…” while you’re barreling down the highway at 70 miles per hour. QNX made news recently when it was chosen over Android by Ford Motor Company to replace Microsoft in Ford’s SYNC onboard platform. The Microsoft SYNC platform had a reputation for buggy voice recognition and regular reboots of the navigation system requiring turning off the ignition. By contrast, QNX can remain running practically forever without performance degradation. Smart, connected cars are everywhere now. Maserati, Mercedes and Audi all showcased vehicles with advanced on-board computer capabilities. The thing they all had in common was QNX - all three companies have committed to the technology. Aside from vehicles, QNX also holds tremendous promise for embedded systems for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. It’s potential is practically unlimited and the licensing revenues could quickly grow into the billions of dollars. Having connected, intelligent light bulbs in your home or business is great, but you don’t need your light bulbs or your toaster’s software crashing and rebooting. The qualities of QNX make it ideal for lightweight, highly reliable compute applications like these, and the market has already vetted and adopted it for this purpose. These two applications alone represent billions of dollars of potential opportunity for QNX. Blackberry has been criticized heavily for owning the technology and for doing practically nothing to advance it. Is it possible that a owner for QNX could have bigger plans for it than we have seen so far? 

At Last, The Biggest Of All 

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this last one could be the biggest commercial bang for Blackberry. BES, or Blackberry Enterprise Server was developed and sold in conjunction with Blackberry handheld devices for use in the enterprise. Basically BES is the software that handles email traffic between Exchange or other email systems and the users’ wireless Blackberry devices. However, it does a lot of other things that have made it one of the most beloved pieces of technology among sysadmins and security professionals since its launch. Back in 2007-2008, when Blackberry sales fell apart and people started buying iPhones and Android devices, there was one group of people who were dragged unwillingly into this new paradigm of handheld devices. For the last several years, IT folks who run the email in large organizations had come to rely on BES to handle the email traffic to user devices, which were mostly Blackberry handhelds. It worked great. BES was secure, reliable, and affordable. It gave them asset control so they could see who was logging in and what they were doing. They didn’t have to risk opening up ports or support protocols required by other smartphones. BES just worked, securely. Best of all, they had almost complete administrative control of the Blackberry device, wherever it was. If they needed to wipe it clean of data, that was a button press away. They could remotely reset and troubleshoot the device for a user on the road. In short, the majority of the configuration and control for devices rested with the BES server and the IT staff. Then the smartphone came along and these powers were ripped from IT’s hands practically overnight. Remember what a pain it was getting your work email configured on your first iPhone? So do they. Many times over. Remember the first time someone lost an iPhone with their work email on it? There was nothing IT could do. They were helpless to do nothing but watch while a set of huge new security holes emerged right in front of them. Their beloved BES server could no longer help them since it only worked with Blackberry devices. I had a friend on my company’s helpdesk named Kim. She had reset my lost Blackberry many times over and was able to overnight me a new one by the next day. I remember the first time I called her after I got my Android phone: “You have a what now?” I remember her asking. When I told her, she said, sounding aggravated,

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that at all, you’re on your own,”

then I’m sure she went somewhere to be by herself and smash things.

Why does this matter now? The hole that was left by BES has never been sufficiently closed, even through today. Many analysts think that BES could have some significant, untapped value if evolved and positioned the right way. It’s pretty certain Blackberry devices are not coming back, but analysts speculate that if Blackberry could adapt BES to work with modern devices the same way it works with Blackberry devices, it could have a real moneymaker on its hands. Samsung and Blackberry inked a partnership in November 2014 to collaborate to bring an Android-compatible BES-like solution to market. Apple and IBM partnered earlier in the year to attempt the same thing for iOS devices. If Samsung succeeds and beats Apple to the punch, it would have a major feature advantage to market to enterprise customers. Owning BES and its installed base would definitely accelerate that.