BlackBerry Messenger Reportedly Coming to iOS June 27 [Updated]

Mums said:

Not sure why this matters..

Click to expand...

BlackBerry's are actually far more common than iphones in other markets. I don't think this is realy aimed at US markets. In Panama and other latin american countries everybody has a blackberry because of this ability to chat for free because of the high costs of SMS's and iPhones are really expensive for most people.

What I don't understand is what BB hopes to gain from this. It is a free service that allows people to chat with other BB users without buying a blackberry. This will only hurt their sales.

Apple was stupid not to allow integration with BB messenger a long time ago.

People use Blackberries?

Tiger8 said:

because it is 10x more reliable than iMessage, it actually works

Click to expand...

Except when their message switch blew up, then it didn't for days and days. After a shaky start iMessage seems ok these days. I don't understand the logic of this though, BB has nothing to gain as there are already several established cross platform messaging systems already.

It would be awesome if Blackberry could include their keyboard from BB10 into the app... I would love to be able to test it out.

Isn't this just going to encourage Blackberry's last few users to jump ship to iOS/Android.

One of the reasons that the few people I know that have stuck with Blackberry is for BBM; now they can keep it and switch.

Are enough non-BB customers going to download the app to encourage others to buy a BB? I think not. There are just too many other cross platform competitors.

Just seems like a crazy business decision to me.

toaster64 said:

People use Blackberries?

Click to expand...

"Despite their troubles in the US and certain other established markets, BlackBerry is the number one smartphone in the UAE, the top smartphone vendor in Latin America with 35.8% market share, and number one in Africa, where its 44% share of the South African market is typical."

from http://www.cantechletter.com/2012/0...g-markets-how-research-in-motion-can-rebound/

rwilliams said:

Half the time I send an iMessage, it ends up being sent as a text. It's hardly reliable.

Click to expand...

For you.

Good news for consumers. I don't know anyone personally who uses bbm but its good for those that do.

I'm still waiting for messaging system that includes sending messages on all devices (especially PC/Mac's) and that has sms integration as a back up if the user isn't available on the chat service.

Unfortunately nothing does this though Hangouts is supposedly working on this.

fingers crossed.

Right now the best option is still imessage since it at least has sms integration on the iphone.

facebook message makes sense for those who are using it on the iphone as well. Especially for group chats. What's app comes in 3rd since a lot of people have it on there smartphones.

Yawn.

GSPice said:

For you.

Click to expand...

Well, my experience with iMessage would be the one that matters most to me, now wouldn't it?

GSPice said:

For you.

Click to expand...

What kind of comment is this?

Hey, rwilliams, damn you for not telling us about people who aren't you!

Who cares?

rwilliams said:

Half the time I send an iMessage, it ends up being sent as a text. It's hardly reliable.

Click to expand...

Half, really? The only time it's ever happened to me is when I'm on the lake with poor signal. That's only because the you can still access the cell SMS protocol when you don't have reliable web access needed for imessage. The fact that it so easily falls back to SMS is a good thing.

TMar said:

Half, really? The only time it's ever happened to me is when I'm on the lake with poor signal. That's only because the you can still access the cell SMS protocol when you don't have reliable web access needed for imessage. The fact that it so easily falls back to SMS is a good thing.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd say in the last couple of months, half of them get sent as texts. Before that, it was pretty solid.

More message platform fragmentation from an company who's ship sailed long ago!

rwilliams said:

Yeah, I'd say in the last couple of months, half of them get sent as texts. Before that, it was pretty solid.

Click to expand...

Still I doubt that it's the messaging service but something with your web access/screwed up config on your phone. Restore.

No one in the U.S. cares. The rest of the world may due to the prevalence of BlackBerries in those markets.

everything-i said:

Except when their message switch blew up, then it didn't for days and days. After a shaky start iMessage seems ok these days. I don't understand the logic of this though, BB has nothing to gain as there are already several established cross platform messaging systems already.

Click to expand...

iMessage outages are fairly frequent, and I'm not going to go after the weird 'activation' process and how sometimes it sends messages either a few hours late or tells the user that they have been delivered in the time the other user did not even get a text.

Can anybody tell me why this is a good business decision?

Giving away one of their key features for free and giving people a big reason to not use BB10 and buy their phones

Why would anyone want this? Better, why would most people want this? I don't bother to message anyone with a BB these days and if I do, we text.

Liquorpuki said:

Can anybody tell me why this is a good business decision?

Giving away one of their key features for free and giving people a big reason to not use BB10 and buy their phones

Click to expand...

Retain current Blackberry users who may have considered bolting for another platform because their friends have moved on and they can no longer "easily" communicate with them as they did before with BBM. I think it's more about retention at this point than getting people to switch to Blackberry.

Liquorpuki said:

Can anybody tell me why this is a good business decision?

Giving away one of their key features for free and giving people a big reason to not use BB10 and buy their phones

Click to expand...

Often times hardware companies attempt to save themselves by converting to services companies, IBM being an example of one that has worked.

I agree that this signals the hard times that BB hardware has fallen upon and will likely not recover from.

Zunjine said:

BBM is a highly reliable, highly secure, fully featured messaging system. I agree that they should have done this sooner but the fact remains we will soon have access to another excellent option for messaging.

I'll be downloading it.

Click to expand...

Agree with everything you say except perhaps the sooner remark. Had BB brought this out years ago they would have devalued their physical product at a time that would have been most unfortunate. There was no winning move.

----------

Liquorpuki said:

Can anybody tell me why this is a good business decision?

Giving away one of their key features for free and giving people a big reason to not use BB10 and buy their phones

Click to expand...

They didn't have a choice if they wanted BBM to retain relevance.

Excellent! Now I have to find somebody who still uses a Blackberry so we can chat! (And I live in Latin America...)