BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) has already launched it’s massively popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) on iOS and Android platforms, and now the company is also considering the launch of this service on Windows Phone OS in the later part of the year. BBM has some rivals like WhatsApp, Line and WeChat, which are all popular messaging services. As of March 2014, BBM has 85 million monthly users and global registered users totaling around 113 million.
John Sims, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) President at Global Enterprise Services recently said in a blog post, “We’ve expanded our BES10 and BBM messaging platform to include iOS and Android and later this year, we will add Windows Phone.”
BlackBerry hopes to gain more subscribers
The Canadian company headquartered at Waterloo announced back in February 2014 that BBM will come to Nokia X and Windows Phone in the coming months.
BBM had been exclusively available on the BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) mobiles only, but last year the company made it available on other competing platforms like Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS as well. According to analysts analysts, this strategic move taken by the Canadian firm will help it to provide its customers with a mobile environment that is more flexible and open. The company hopes that the move will also help it to increase its global subscribers and improve profits. This strategy will also help the smartphone maker to raise funds for its turnaround.
Making BBM more user-friendly
Sims, who previously headed SAP’s mobile services and telecom, added that the firm is aiming towards continuing the provision of increased flexibility and choices in the mobile device environments.
“We’re making this strategic move to continue providing the most open and flexible mobile environments for our customers,” he said.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) often emphasized that if it successfully increases the user base for its messaging app BBM, it would help the company in acquiring increased monetization opportunities for services that they offer “through the platform, through solutions implementation” by customers, who are enterprise based and also through advertising, Sims added. The reach of the BBM user base needs to be extended, and to make this happen, the company has launched an eBBM suite, which is a part of its strategy for the growing the user population and to gain better opportunities for monetizing the BBM platform’s value.
