News that the U.S. Department of Defense may use 80,000 BlackBerry smartphones in one of its new secure networks has breathed new life into the company’s stock price, Bloomberg News reports.
BlackBerry was up nearly 10 percent Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange Monday afternoon, after an 18 percent spike in intraday trading that marked the largest such increase since April 2009.
The DoD said Thursday that BlackBerry phones accounts for 98 percent of the devices supported by the network that rolls out at the end of this month, which comprises 80,000 Blackberry headsets and 1,800 phones and tablets running Apple or Google software.
The company, which lost billions of dollars in 2013 – and saw its stock price drop 33 percent — amid disappointing sales of its latest lines of smartphones, has sought to rebound around its core business and defense customers.