Rising share prices indicate BlackBerry may have a brighter future than many feared - has it outwitted the commoditisation of the mobile phone?

BlackBerry is resurgent – the troubled maker of smartphones for business has seen its share price soar back to levels that it has not touched since mid-September. It has been buoyed by a new chief executive and the sense that, finally, it has more sense than to chase Samsung and Apple. Headlines about a death spiral are memories receding into the distance.

This has been helped by news that American government agencies, while they are also opening up to new platforms such as Android, are renewing contracts with the Canadian-based firm. It’s as much as BlackBerry can hope for. Plans to sell and leaseback its buildings will also provide more money to fund what is still a transition process.

John Chen, the new chief executive has confirmed his commitment to keyboard phones, and there are plenty of users around the world who still love them. Barack Obama, who once said security services wouldn’t let him have an iPhone, took the now infamous ‘selfie’ with David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt on a new BlackBerry, showing scant disregard for picture quality now available on newer phones in the process. There is loyalty to the brand at the highest levels, and Chen may finally have a strategy to turn that into cash.
 
Chen's strategy, though, has yet to fully show itself. It’s focused on business users, and involves a partnership with manufacturer Foxconn on lower-end handsets. Still, the market has increasing confidence in Chen – even when he announced a £3bn ($4.4bn) loss, shares rose 16pc. Suggestions that BlackBerry could be back in the black within a year or so look remarkably optimistic, but they're not impossible.
While the sense of optimism is inescapable, it stems, perhaps, from the fact that BlackBerry seems to understand that it is not all about hardware. If it can make money from its secure messaging platform, BBM, and from its server products, it may become as indispensable to some businesses as ever it was. And it will not need to bother with the costly gamble of making increasingly commoditised hardware.