BlackBerry stock spikes following Department of Defense news

BlackBerry stock is up by close to 9 percent in early-afternoon Tuesday trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange on news that the U.S. Defense Dept. will buy 80,000 smartphones from the once-ailing company. The rollout will begin January 31, and include 1,800 Apple and Android devices as part of a $16 million project to give military users access to secure information on the go.

News that the U.S. Department of Defense may use 80,000 BlackBerry smartphones in one of its new secure networks has breathed new life into the company’s stock price, Bloomberg News reports. BlackBerry was up nearly 10 percent Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange Monday afternoon, after an 18 percent spike in intraday trading that marked the largest such increase since April 2009. The DoD said Thursday that BlackBerry phones accounts for 98 percent of the devices supported by the network that rolls out at the end of this month, which comprises 80,000 Blackberry headsets and 1,800 phones and tablets running Apple or Google software.