BlackBerry’s 1 million unit purchase order news is vague but gets the job done: Stock soars 8%

When BlackBerry announced a 1 million unit “single purchase order” to an unnamed buyer, its stock perked up more than 8 percent. One million units! Momentum!

Maybe.

I’m not too convinced by the announcement. BlackBerry is being as vague as possible, and when a company obfuscates the details, it’s for a reason. BlackBerry in this case has given no detail, other than that it sold a million units. That means that we cannot parse the following:

• If the sale is to a current, or new partner;
• What handsets the deal is comprised of;
• If the sale is to be delivered over a period of time, or as a single shipment;
• If it is over a period of time, say a full year, the delivery schedule for the handsets might in fact not be that impressive – ie, a million units to an existing major partner over a year could in fact intimate slow sales;
• How many markets the phones are destined for – if they are for an EU-wide carrier over a yearlong period, that’s not impressive;

However, the company is currently surfing a warm media wave and stock rally simply because something happened. I’m not going to break out the applause until we know more about the deal. And, as we in the tech media mocked Microsoft for reporting Windows Phone handsets sales into carrier channels and not into the hands of consumers, I’m not inclined to grant BlackBerry extra leniency.

That said, the company was hopping for a pop, and it got one. TNW has reached out to the company, and will update this post upon hearing back.

Naturally, the company’s announcement could in fact be big news – say, if the order was for a new partner, all at once, for a single country market, thus indicating big demand. For now, however, sit tight.

Header image via Justin Sullivan / AFP / Getty Images