BlackBerry Could End Up as Hottest Stock of 2014 With 50% Growth for the Year as Samsung Braces Investors for 27% Decline in Profit

Is Canadian phonemaker BlackBerry on a rebound? After being dismissed as a has-been company and anticipated to die soon, the Waterloo-based tech firm appears not only for a recovery but even growth.

Techcrunch reported on Wednesday that BlackBerry's shareprice is up 50 per cent on the year and is considered one of the best performers in 2014. From a $7.44 opening price in January, the firm's stock price closed on Tuesday at $11.21.

In contrast, acknowledged market leaders such as Apple's shares grew on 20 per cent for the same period, Google by only 5 per cent and Samsung has even issued a warning to investors to be prepared for a profit decline by up to 27 per cent.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen is obviously doing the Toronto company some good as the company changed business strategies and defocused on the mobile and tablet markets and instead shifted to pushing its popular Messenger app as it also released minor updates to its BB10 mobile operating system.

However, despite the brighter outlook, it would still be an uphill climb for BlackBerry as its market share of smartphones continue to shrink to even zero per cent in the U.S. market.

Samsung attributed its expected loss to weak sales which is part of a bigger slump in demand for products of the South Korean giant across Europe and Asia and the flood of cheaper phones in the market. In June, Samsung's share price went down 11%.

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