Canadian cybersecurity stock BlackBerry (TSE:BB) might have been the king of mobile devices once, but now it is pushing more aggressively into a new kind of mobile device: the car. To that end, BlackBerry, along with TTTech Auto, showed off the newest version of MotionWise Schedule for QNX SDP 8.0, a tool designed to streamline the development of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs). Investors, however, were not at all pleased, and BlackBerry shares lost over 4% in Tuesday morning’s trading.
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Increasingly, the markets are looking at SDVs, a term that encompasses how software interacts with vehicles to offer a range of new solutions and products to add to the standard vehicle. That, in turn, is changing how not only we interact with our cars but also how cars interact with us. Tools like MotionWise Schedule are set to help on that front and give a better experience.
With MotionWise Schedule, software development for vehicle applications will go that much faster and produce more fruit overall. For more automakers building the SDV of tomorrow, they will find the process goes a lot easier with “time-triggered scheduling capabilities” and “a competitive edge in achieving determinism for…critical applications,” noted John Wall, chief operating officer for QNX.
A New Threat
While this is certainly good news for BlackBerry—and, by extension, BlackBerry investors—it unfortunately does not come with more good news attached. In fact, BlackBery is now facing a serious competitive threat in the artificial intelligence (AI) arena from UiPath (PATH).
A recent report noted that UiPath is working in some of the same areas that BlackBerry is, particularly in terms of a complete automation platform, giving robotic process automation a new lease on life throughout multiple markets. BlackBerry’s scheduling software may find itself in a tougher fight than expected when it is left to take on a complete process automation tool supported by AI.
Is BlackBerry a Good Stock to Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSE:BB stock based on four Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 28.56% loss in its share price over the past year, the average TSE:BB price target of C$4.09 per share implies 3.54% upside potential.
