BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) might be struggling in developed markets of Europe and the U.S., but continues to gain traction in emerging markets with its messaging service, BlackBerry Messenger. PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Quarter-three earnings clearly paint a picture of how BBM might be gaining an advantage at the expense of WhatsApp.
BlackBerry Pricing Advantage
A study carried out by Nielsen shows that BBM is slowly fending off competition to become the primary messaging services in emerging markets. It is believed that 79% of the users in Indonesia with smartphones use the BBM service as their primary messaging service for 23 minutes a day. On the other hand, it is estimated that only 57% of smartphone users use WhatsApp for messaging at an average of six minutes a day.
BlackBerry smartphones continue to be the darling of people in emerging markets mostly because of their pricing. In economies where people find it hard to find ends-meat, yearning for iPhones and Galaxies is always out of the picture. BlackBerry has in the recent past been developing smartphones that target emerging markets in terms of pricing while incorporating all the necessary features efficient for communication and browsing the internet.
WhatsApp Threat
The shift to BlackBerry’s BBM continues to have a financial impact on telecommunication companies, which are earning great chunk of their earnings from services on offer. Indonesia huge marketplace for BlackBerry’s phones has seen it dubbed the ‘BlackBerry Nation.’ WhatsApp is expected to offer BBM the biggest challenge in pursuit for market share in the country.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s BBM continues to gain traction in most parts of the world mostly because of its infrastructure that has always been relied upon in terms of offering encrypted security for stored data. Cross-platform incompatibility is a major challenge for BBM especially with the entry of more Android phones into the emerging markets. The entrance of Android phones translates to WhatsApp gaining market share at the expense of BlackBerry’s BBM.
