Blackberry shares have had their best run since 2001, driven in part by news of a settlement with Facebook over messaging patents.
Blackberry filed a lawsuit in 2018, claiming that Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram infringed on some of its patents. On Friday, Blackberry announced it had reached a settlement agreement with Facebook.
At the same time, as TheStreet points out, Blackberry also sold 90 patents, related to mobile technologies, to Huawei. Company CFO Steve Rai described them as “a very small number of patents that are no longer relevant to the business.”
The company also inked a deal with AWS to use its intelligent-vehicle-data platform, Ivy, as the basis for automakers to develop their own in-vehicle services.
As TheStreet highlights, the combination of these three events is helping Blackberry rally, with its stock going on its best run in 20 years. Even more, it validates the company’s decision to focus on software, as opposed to the hardware business that defined the company before the rise of the iPhone and touchscreen interfaces.