Monday, January 20, 2014

(BN) BlackBerry Surges on Continued Pentagon Dominance

// ES: Innovation and government services don't mix.

(Bloomberg ) BlackBerry Ltd. (BB) surged the most in a month after the U.S. Department of Defense said the company's smartphones will account for 98 percent of devices in one of its new networks.

About 80,000 BlackBerrys and 1,800 phones and tablets based on Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s iOS software and Google Inc. (GOOG)'s Android operating system will start being hooked up to the Department of Defense's management system at the end of this month, the Defense Information Systems Agency said in a statement last week. 

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company has been losing market share to Apple and Android devices for years as its devices failed to carry the same features and range of consumer-focused applications as the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy range. John Chen, who took over as chief executive officer in November, is reorienting the company toward its core of business and government users, pledging to predominantly make models fitted with BlackBerry's traditional physical keyboard in the future.

The report shows that Samsung Electronics Co. (SMSN), the biggest maker of Android devices, and Apple are not making the inroads into military smartphone procurement that many expected because they can't always meet the security specifications the Pentagon wants, Doug Pollitt, a broker at Toronto-based Pollitt & Co, said by phone.

Unclassified Documents

"It's a challenging specification and other vendors are having a tough time meeting it," said Pollitt, whose brokerage owns shares of BlackBerry. "BlackBerry has already has got it."

The defense agency known as DISA, which implements the U.S. military's information technology policies, will introduce the first phase of a new system on Jan. 31 to make it easier for personnel to work on unclassified documents from wireless devices. A military app store will be included in the first phase and the program currently supports 16 mobile apps, according to DISA's statement.

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