On the subject of technology stocks, a “David and Goliath” story played out recently in the finals of the “Squawk Box Money Madness” stock tournament.  Our own fallen Canadian icon, BlackBerry, with a market value of $7 billion, beat out the $400 billion behemoth Apple.  Struggling to stay relevant with its new offering of Z10 and Q10 phones, which boast the new BB10 operating system, BlackBerry won in a landslide, with 63% of the nearly 16,000 votes cast on CNBC’s Facebook page and Squawk.CNBC.com show page.  The tournament started matching up 16 of the most popular stocks on CNBC.com head-to-head, with the best playing the worst based on their 2013 performance.  The show ran polls each day asking the question: “Which stock will have the best gains from the start of the second quarter to the end of the year?”  Apple’s recent slump made it a No. 4 seed on its side, while BlackBerry’s gains so far this year earned it a top seed on its side. BlackBerry beat Nokia, IBM, and Facebook to reach the final.  Apple beat Netflix, General Electric, and Bank of America.  Not that any of this guarantees what the stocks will do in the future, but it was interesting to see the smaller Canadian company come out with the most votes, particularly against an impressive list of U.S. ‘favourites.’

While real comebacks in technology are rare, we think that many investors have not looked closely enough at what new management and, more importantly, a new operating system, have done to improve the potential return of Blackberry as a force in the smartphone market.  The CEO has stressed the positioning of the Blackberry franchise in the growing world of ‘mobile computing.’  A powerful embedded operating system, such as the Blackberry10 system acquired through QNX two years ago, allows the devices to by used in a greater array of machine-to-machine communications, multi-tasking operating devices and mobile computing platforms.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time using the new Blackberry Z10 or, more impressively, the Q10 with the traditional physical keyboard, to see that the system does a lot that can’t be emulated by Apple’s OS or Samsung/Google’s Android systems.  We continue to hold the stock and believe that the new operating system and devices will resurrect the Blackberry brand as a strong player in the growing ‘mobile computing’ business.

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