BlackBerry’s software sales are contributing to a share value increase according to a new report. BlackBerry, which has been known in the past for being a dominant brand in the smartphone industry has since moved to focusing its efforts on software only after outsourcing its hardware efforts to TCL, allowing it more time to zero in on the software side of its business. That move seems to have finally paid off as BlackBerry’s shares saw an increase in value by 14 percent or five centers per share, giving BlackBerry and its investors something to look forward to, especially if the trend continues for the remainder of the year and onward into 2018.
Software and services weren’t the only contributing factor to BlackBerry’s uptick in share value but it does seem to have played the biggest role, moving up by 26 percent ending the second quarter last year to reach $196 Million the same time this year. BlackBerry also saw a rather big uptick in revenue from its licensing fees, which jumped up to a total of $56 Million. This is in contrast to the $16 Million in revenue from its licensing fees that it made around the same time last year, though it’s also worth considering that BlackBerry was still focused on hardware around that time and it wasn’t until this year that it made the decision to focus mostly on software and licensing.
BlackBerry’s software and services revenue may have been the bigger influence of the company’s share value rising for now, which analysts reportedly predicted would only come in at about $175 Million for the end of the quarter, but it could end up closing the gape between that portion of revenue and the revenue from licensing fees thanks to some new deals it has in the works. Back on September 21st, it was reported that BlackBerry was partnering up with Delphi to use BlackBerry’s QNX OS for autonomous vehicle use, and the company apparently seeks to close a deal with an automaker at some point before the end of 2017 for self-driving cars in some respect, though it hasn’t mentioned who the manufacturer might be. This is in addition to BlackBerry recently licensing some of its patents to Timex, a long-time traditional watchmaker, though it’s still unclear what those patents will be used for.