BlackBerry 10 isn't just Research In Motion's (BB -0.69%) 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 (AAPL 1.27%) iPhone and Google's (GOOGL 0.55%) 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 (MSFT 0.37%) that brokered a deal with Nokia (NOK -0.81%) 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.
