BlackBerry announced last month that its BBM messenger will make its appearance in Android and iOS, BlackBerry didn’t announce a date for the arrival but it did say that it will come this summer. Now a new report on CNet says that BBM might be coming to competing devices preloaded as they are talking to handset manufacturers.
BlackBerry COO, Kristian Tear told CNet that “there is interest from other handset makers”. BBM is going to compete with several other messaging services that re are popular on Android for example, WhatsApp and others. Also manufacturers like Samsung and Apple have their own messaging services, Samsung has ChatOn and Apple has iMessage. And then there is Google Hangouts that will be included on every Android device sold.
It is interesting to see whether users will embrace the BBM or it will end up as yet another message service on Android. But BlackBerry is confident that their 61 million users of BBM platform, out of which 70% are active users, will help BBM to take off on other platforms.
When BBM finally launches on Android and iOS it won’t come with all the features that are present in BB devices but with limited feature set. All the features will eventually make it to other platforms over time according to BlackBerry.
Via CNet
