Will Multi-Platform BBM Help BlackBerry Ltd?

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BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) made an announcement on Thursday that holds a lot of appeal to the Windows Phone users. The wait comes to an end with the popular messaging app BBM now available on the Windows platform, as well. With this, the enterprise clients are most likely to get attracted to using this app.

BlackBerry banking upon security

The messaging service from BlackBerry has been left behind in the race with many such apps dominating the market such as WhatsApp, Line and WeChat. Therefore, to make its app stand apart in the crowd, the company is banking on providing an answer to the security and privacy concerns of the users. Secure messaging service is the utmost requirement of corporations and government agencies, and the new BBM features serve the purpose well and hence prove to be a much more viable messaging tool for those clients.

BlackBerry wants to market the app as a tailored one for the corporate, government agencies and the regulated financial services sectors, which meets all their needs while keeping the security and privacy aspect at its center, and in the last month itself it came with a new version called ‘BBM Protected’. While BlackBerry has no immediate plans of bringing this app to the desktop any soon, but the fact that it has spread to all other platforms will help widen device management capabilities of BlackBerry.

BBM becomes multiple platform app

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The fact that the smartphone business has dwindled over time with many strong competitors grabbing a massive share of the market has forced the company to develop its expertise in other relevant areas. As part of its reinvention strategy, the company has shifted its focus to developing its ‘software and services’ business.

Previously, BBM was accessible only to the BlackBerry users, but recently the company has shifted to providing this service on other platforms as well, which include Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS added last year. The only major platform that was left out was the Windows, and now even that has been covered.

There was a time when BBM was a pioneering app for messaging, but the fact that it was restricted to BlackBerry OS resulted in a decline. The app is popular today as well with nearly 85 million active users and hence still has the potential to become a leader once again with regular updates and improvements.

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