BlackBerry Messenger Reportedly Coming to iOS June 27 [Updated]

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
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The best I can tell is that it is about "mind share" for US folks, try and keep the BB name/brand in people's minds and MAYBE those people will think of BB when they go to purchase a new device down the road.

For Non US markets this would help allow interoperability I guess.

I'm not sure on BB's privacy policies but perhaps they are trying to harvest more data/information and expanding the data network provides that.
 
Patriot24 said:
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.
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Does BB monetize off BBM though? IBM transitioned because they were able to transfer their revenue stream from hardware to services.

BB seems to be just giving away a key feature for free while still relying on hardware for profit. Meanwhile people are now less likely to buy their hardware
 
bushido said:
meh ... but apple needs to bring iMessage to android. im so annoyed having to reply via whatsapp all the time while im on my mac
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BBM has a shot if Apple doesn't bring iMessage to Android. There's a niche here that hasn't been filled. There are a few attempts -- iMessage, Whatsapp, etc. But they all fail to cover the commonly available platforms, or they lack multimedia ability.
 
rwilliams said:
Half the time I send an iMessage, it ends up being sent as a text. It's hardly reliable.
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That's unfair. iMessage works for me practically all the time. When it doesn't it because my connection is poor depending on where I am which I can't fault the app for that.
 
MacRumors said:
.....BlackBerry has clearly decided that the potential benefits of opening up BBM to more users outweigh the risks of BlackBerry device customers defecting to other platforms, but it remains to be seen whether the smartphone pioneer can help stabilize itself with such a move alongside its new BlackBerry 10 operating system.....

Article Link: BlackBerry Messenger Reportedly Coming to iOS June 27 [Updated]
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Say what you want about BB, but I believe this is a good move on their part. They have little left to lose, and everything to gain, even if it only prevents them from losing even more market share. They are in the fight of their life. Kudos to them.
 
Zunjine said:
BBM is a highly reliable,
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Except when it fails, globally, for days at a time, rendering most Blackberry functions useless (not just messaging). And for which there is no integrated, automatic fallback option.

highly secure,
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Except when multiple foreign governments, and likely more domestic ones as well, have backdoors to Blackberry infrastructure.

The notion that Blackberry's infrastructure provides exclusive or superior levels of security is outdated. The notion that Blackberry's infrastructure provides true, unimpregnable security is outright false. Unfortunately, many people who remain partial to Blackberries for whatever reason, repeat the "Blackberry is highly secure" mantra to convince themselves it's a valid reason to keep using them. But it's not. Hasn't been for years, now.


fully featured
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Easy to say when you're the last one to do this.

If Blackberry wants to release BBM to other platforms, sure, let 'em do it. In fact if there were no iOS or iPhone, I'd probably be using a Z10 right now. But I really hope they don't intend to misinform users, making them believe that it's somehow better or safer than other messaging platforms. That might've been true in 2005, but it isn't true today.
 
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Liquorpuki said:
Does BB monetize off BBM though? IBM transitioned because they were able to transfer their revenue stream from hardware to services.

BB seems to be just giving away a key feature for free while still relying on hardware for profit. Meanwhile people are now less likely to buy their hardware
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Outside of the consumer space they could make an enterprise software play where BBM would be one of the apps in the suite that a company could buy for employee collaboration (some branch of BBM designed for enterprise specifically).
 
Using BBM in 2013 is the equivalent of being on dial up. Please RIM your new phones suck. Time to just hang up the gloves before you embarrass yourself too much.
 
dalupus said:
"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/
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Being Number 1 in UAE and South Africa is irrelevant. Hasn't helped the subscriber base, global market share, market price, etc.
 
rwilliams said:
Half the time I send an iMessage, it ends up being sent as a text. It's hardly reliable.
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Well if you don't have an internet connection, it will send it as text.
Blame your provider, not apple.

iMessage currently is the most secure communication framework. Even FBI cannot get the text data because it has so good encryption.
(Otherwise than whatsapp. Sending them in clear text .. yay .. great)
 
Last year during one of their quarterly reports BB touted the fact that subscriptions to their services had grown to 78 million, and in this article they say the base for BBM is 61 million. I don't know much about BB, can't all handsets use BBM, or has their marketshare eroded that much in a year?
 
rwilliams said:
Half the time I send an iMessage, it ends up being sent as a text. It's hardly reliable.
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So what? Did the message get there? Why does the method of transport matter (assuming you have some kind of decent texting plan )
 
Rootus said:
BBM has a shot if Apple doesn't bring iMessage to Android. There's a niche here that hasn't been filled. There are a few attempts -- iMessage, Whatsapp, etc. But they all fail to cover the commonly available platforms, or they lack multimedia ability.
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Whatsapp is cross-platform and supports multimedia.

Arcus said:
So what? Did the message get there? Why does the method of transport matter (assuming you have some kind of decent texting plan )
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That's fine if your circle of friends lives in the same country as you. I'm not aware of many plans that have unlimited international text messages though!
 
I think one of the strengths of iMessage is that it is integrated into the SMS app. I don't want to have to switch apps based on who I'm going to send a message to, or have to remember what platform every friend has. I message everyone in the Messages app, and it figures out whether it needs to be blue or green by itself.

If BBM can do that too, I'd probably use it because I wouldn't have to think about it.
 
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