Research In Motion's a Perfect $10
BlackBerry 10 isn't just Research In Motion's upcoming operating system update.
The smartphone pioneer's stock also hit $10 today on analyst excitement about the prospects for the company's new platform.
If RIM in double digits doesn't seem like such a big deal, consider that you have to go all the way back to June to find the last time that the shares were trading above the $10 mark.
With the BlackBerry 10 launch event slated for Jan. 30, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek is upping his rating on RIM from underform to hold. His price target is going from $5 to -- wait for it -- $10.
Misek is seeing wireless carriers growing interested in the wave of new BlackBerry phones that will roll out early next year.
That's a bit of a surprise. The market has only gotten more competitive since the last time that RIM has updated its platform. Apple's iPhone and Google's Android combined to account for 86.9% of the smartphone market in this country in August, according to industry tracker comScore.
RIM will also have to deal with a hungry Microsoft that brokered a deal with Nokia to champion its radically updated Windows Phone 8 mobile operating system. In other words, RIM is facing the always fearsome Apple, the growing manufacturers flocking to the open-source ways of Google's Android, and Microsoft pairing up with a global giant in Nokia that was only surpassed by Samsung to be the world's biggest mobile phone manufacturer earlier this year.
Misek is still encouraged. The $14.4 billion in revenue that he is targeting for fiscal 2014 -- which begins in a little more than three months -- is far more than the $11.3 billion that Wall Street's targeting. With the revolutionary BlackBerry 10 giving some believers a reason to hope that the company will bounce back next year -- after seeing its smartphone market share sliced in half over the past year -- a shot at a return to glory is better than not taking a shot at all.
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The article Research In Motion's a Perfect $10 originally appeared on Fool.com.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Aristotle Munarriz has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Motley Fool newsletter services recommend Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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