Mystery buyer of 1 million BlackBerry 10 units is revealed

Earlier this month, BlackBerry got a short in the arm when it was announced that a mystery buyer had purchased 1 million units of BlackBerry 10 handsets. The exact breakdown of the purchase wasn't announced, although the QWERTY equipped BlackBerry Q10 isn't expected to arrive for another few weeks yet. At the time, Canadian based BlackBerry said that the purchase was the largest single order for BlackBerry devices in company history.

Fast forward to Monday, and we now know the identity of the buyer. According to perenially bearish investment firm Detwiler Fenton, the buyer of the 1 million BB10 units was wireless distributor Brightstar. The company supplies phones to a number of big names such as Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, Virgin Mobile and TracFone Wireless. Verizon relies on the company to supply big box retailers and third party retailers and authorized re-sellers.

Everytime that Detwiler Fenton opens its mouth about BlackBerry, it has been to say a negative comment. Even back in December, the company issued a bearish report on BlackBerry (then called Research In Motion). Today, it continued this pattern when the firm's managing director, Marc Gerber, said that the use of Brightstar to make the purchase "...suggests Verizon doesn’t believe this will be a strong seller, since it normally tries to allocate hot product on its own."  We don't know if Detwiler Fenton is short BlackBerry shares (a bet that the stock is going to drop), but if they are, this would be a good example of what is called on Wall Street as "talking your position".

Regardless, the mystery is solved and regardless of who made the purchase, it still represents a risk-taking investment on someone's part. So when you look at it that way, someone still has the hots for BlackBerry 10.

source: AllThingsD