Joint Apple and Blackberry IM Client...?

[jambobowron]

I was thinking today as I scanned through the App Store looking for an iPhone to iPhone IM messenger.. would it be so unreasonable for Apple and RIM to join forces... and create the best IM clinet known to man and women of course??
it's not as if either company would lose out on Market share... I belive they would keep plodding along as they are... except us all on iPhones could acutually chat to all of your friends who have Blackberrys who believe that they are 'young business men and woman'...

Surely that can be managed by 2 very popular compaines... but of course it won't ever be reality becuase they would never do tht for fear f the consequences it could cause to their sales??

what do you think?

 

[darngooddesign]

If the desktop iChat won't do any other protocols like Yahoo or MSN why would they join with BB?

 

[Drewsky87]

It would be nice because I know a good amount of people that own a blackberry however I couldn't see that ever happening because it could have a noticeable affect on the BB market. I think BBM is a big selling point for a lot of BB owners (at least the ones that I know) and if they expanded the protocol to other devices I could see these people moving on to a different phone because they would still be able to use BBM (theoretically) and get their unlimited messaging to everyone they know who still own BBs.

 

[bozzykid]

would it be so unreasonable for Apple and RIM to join forces...

Probably about as reasonable as Apple and MS joining forces to create a new OS.

 

[OriginalFormula]

New BBM came out very recently, and added a few nice extra features to BBM. But as it stands now, the iPhone has no central "Apple Service" of sorts, that is connected to every iPhone on a network.

iPhones could try to use the Serial Number instead of a PIN, but serial numbers are rather long and unwieldy, and aren't catalogued by Apple in the same manner RIM catalogues PINs.

 

[RoboCop001]

Probably about as reasonable as Apple and MS joining forces to create a new OS.

I think you have something here.

I'm going to patent the name... WindOSX. That's pronounced Wind-ox. Almost like Windex.

[begins to tap dance] Goldblum is content!

 

[jambobowron]

Ok Ok... i no it will never happen... but BB made BBconnect for Palm?? if they made an app for the app store... im sure apple would accept it i.e it doesn't copy anything they are doing at the moment and they licenced microsoft and google apps all be it after a bit of a fight

Even if they charged like $5 or whatever.. i would buy it

 

[scaredpoet]

Surely that can be managed by 2 very popular compaines...

Only if they both had a viable commercial interest in doing so. But at least from RIM's perspective, there's no reason to do this at all.

Getting anyone else - Apple, Palm, Android, anyone - on Blackberry messenger requires that RIM either give these devices access to the blackberry data network, or provide some sort of gateway that acts as a proxy for them.
But why would RIM want to do that? RIM has been getting a cut of the data fees Blackberry users pay every month way before Apple got into the game with the iPhone. Every user that uses Blackberry messenger without having a Blackberry means that's one user that RIM isn't getting revenue from.

RIM DID allow e-mail services on nokia and some other limited smartphones in the past, but only because those manufacturers paid licensing agreements, AND those users still had to be on certain data plans that paid revenue to RIM. So, RIM didn't manufacture the phones, but they got licensing fees AND still got the revenue. Pretty sweet deal.

Now, judge for yourself how willing Apple might be to agree to something similar.

Frankly, as a former blackberry user myself, I found that I used SMS a lot more than I use BBM. And I don't miss it.