BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) continues its cross-platform strategy with BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for Windows Phone. The Canadian mobile communications company will officially roll out the BBM for Windows Phone next week. BBM is already available on devices powered by the iOS of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the Android operating system of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) previously announced the availability of the private beta of BBM for Windows Phone. According to the company, the 10,000 testing slots were taken within 24 hours following the announcement—a sign of excitement and momentum.
In a blog post, Mathew Talbot, the senior vice president of emerging solutions at BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) emphasized that BBM is “no longer synonymous with BlackBerry” since the messaging app is already available on different platform. He explained that BlackBerry used to refer to the company’s smartphone, operating system and the messaging app.
According to Talbot, In Indonesia alone, there are more than 34 million mobile active users using BBM. He noted that more than 50% of those users are using non-BlackeBerry devices, which only shows that BBM is going cross-platform.
“Taking BBM to other platforms is an important move for BlackBerry. Sure, it’s an invitation to former users to come back. We know that people love BBM, but may have stopped using it in recent years because they couldn’t use it on other handsets. We’d love to have them back,” said Talbot.
Talbot also explained that cross-platform mobile messaging apps big and becoming bigger because they are competing with and winning against SMS services. According to him, mobile messaging is almost free and allows users to send messages without limits even if they are chatting internationally because data are sent through the internet.
On the other hand, SMS are sent through cellular networks and tied through the phone plans of users, which costs money based on the number of messages sent. International SMS is even more expensive and unreliable to carrier platform incompatibility.
According to Talbot, making BBM available to other platforms opens new opportunities given the fact that messaging is becoming the number one way to interface with the new economic ecosystem. He emphasized that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSE:BB) can leverage cross-platform messaging to offer more valuable services through BBM.
Last month, BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) launched BBM Protected to provide an extra-layer of encryption to enterprise customers.
