Facts: BBM connects over 60 million users today reliably offering many advantages over other messengers like whatsapp or even iMessage. Over 10 billion messages are transported by the reliable servers everyday. Almost half of these 10 billion messages are read within 20 seconds of receiving the message, this is real interaction!
The first version of multi-platform BBM arriving this summer for iOS 6.0+ and Android devices that have ICS or above will offer BBM chats, multi-person chats, voice note sharing, and BlackBerry Groups. Apart from the rumours I totally didn’t see this one coming.
“Why are we doing this now? It’s a statement of confidence,” Heins said. “The BlackBerry 10 platform is so strong and support has been so good that the time is right for BBM to become and independent messaging solution.”
BBM has been was the single most traffic driving reason for BlackBerry(Apart from the keyboard). That was true 4 months ago. The BlackBerry 10 platform with peak, hub and flow is currently the most incredible current mobile computing platform. But this is just my opinion, why go for it?
So 5 years back BlackBerry was the king of the smartphone market and lost its position because of technical problems with the Java based BlackBerry OS platform. All the market share was grabbed by iOS and Android. BlackBerry definitely did a deep study of the market and aa excellent survey analysis to realise it definitely is not a smart move to isolate currently the 2 largest groups of smartphone users to communicate for free with BlackBerry users. This move will not widen the consumer appeal but can also get back the corporate customers they lost due to technical issues in pre-BB10 OS devices. This will definitely also have more people checking out BlackBerry. Also for current BlackBerry users it will increase the long term relevance of BBM. BlackBerry can also limit BBM features for other platforms which will enhance sales for BlackBerry devices. With contextual apps, game controllers support, HDMI screen expansion and NFC apps coming, BlackBerry 10 as platform has unmatched potential. Anyways having people holding on to their hardware for a single feature would just lead to negative retention.
The second way we can see it is with context to BBM channels. For those who are hearing about it for the 1st time it is basically is similar to a social network like twitter where brands can message or share updates with their fans. BBM can now challenge twitter as mobile-only social network. Where BBM stands an advantage is the interaction factor as discusses earlier. Qualitatively it will allow users to have a deeper engagement with these brands as compared to on Facebook or twitter. Even now, many SMBs have a BBM pin to connect to fans as it is definitely a much faster, better and reliable method then what can be done through twitter or facebook to pass on information. Brands and users, meanwhile, will be able to track metrics such as subscribers and engagement.
So BBM won’t only be competing with Whatsapp, Viber and iMessage but also the mighty likes of Facebook and Twitter. This is a whole new major space opening up for Blackberry. There are always ways to monetize a successful service without charging the end user which will be thought of in the future. Everyone can agree that BBM is the most powerful instant messaging service with top class security and privacy.
Conclusion: With BlackBerry 10′s awesome keyboard, gestures, hub, peak and flow BBM is no more the single most driving factor for BlackBerry hardware, instead BBM may end up as a killer mobile social network and instant messenger opening an entirely new space for BlackBerry. With the Q5 launching it won’t be necessary to go to a not so friendly neighbourhood malware rich platform like Android, for the price conscious side of the mobile market. It will definitely strengthen the BlackBerry brand and attract new users to it. So this is definitely a win-win situation for BlackBerry and its users. Hopefully it will be approved by Google and Apple for their app stores without any issues. What will actually happen? Only time will tell. Let me know what you think by dropping by some comments on the post.