The BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) is one of the most popular messaging apllication and one of BlackBerry OS most popular features. Last month the Canadian company announced that the BBM service will available this summer as a third-party app to the two most popular smart platforms – iOS and Android.
BlackBerry is looking forward to bring the BBM experience to a wider group of mobile users and to make BBM a multi-platform mobile service. The BBM will be compatible on devices running iOS 6 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich (OS 4.0) or higher.
Availability of BBM to Android and iOS, subject to approval by the Apple App Store and Google Play. If approved by Apple and Google, the BBM app will be available as a free download.
As the company stated, they have plans of making BBM as fully featured on Android and iOS as possible. Initially the iOS and Android users are expected to be able to experience the following BBM features:
- The immediacy of BBM chats
- Multi-person chats
- Voice note sharing
- BlackBerry Groups, where BBM users are able to set up groups of up to 30 people and share calendar, photos, files and more
Android and iOS users won’t get the full BlackBerry Messenger experience, not at first anyway. BlackBerry has plans to expand the functionality of the iOS and Android apps with some of the new BBM features such as Voice and video calls, Screenshare, and the just announced Channels. These will come as subsequent updates.
Update: As the more news rolles down suggesting that the Canadian Company want BBM to be available out of box. “There is interest from other handset makers” says BlackBerry COO Kristian Tear, but he didn’t say which ones. The Company is talking to a number of partners and handset manufacturers to get its BlackBerry Messenger service preloaded on to their phones.
At present BBM has more than 51 million daily active users who are connecting with friends or colleagues an average of 90 minutes every day and more than 60 million monthly active users. That’s not a big number difference, it’s mean that every BBM user using the service everyday on a high. BBM users send and receive more than 10 billion messages each day and almost half of BBM messages are read within 20 seconds of being received; indicating how truly engaged BBM customers are.
But when it comes to engaging users other than the BlackBerry OS, it will be very interesting to look out for that how BBM will make a way against iMessage, WhatsApp and WeChat messaging services on non-BlackBerry platforms.
This will be the first time that BlackBerry’s messaging service will be available on non-BlackBerry devices. This could be a danger move by BlackBerry as the multi-paltform BBM service will offer BBM users to switch from their BlackBerry devices to iPhones and Android phones without lossing theri existing BBM accounts.
As there is no official announcement from BlackBerry about the release date of the BBM service for Android and iOS, we all have to wait. Stay tuned for details.
