Wow! I am a little blown away by this if its true. Given the explanation that RIM wants to “own the space” it does make sense though.
RIM has a true diamond in the rough with BBM and if they can license it and open it up to other platforms in a pared down version, it could turn out very well for them IMO. There may even be a few converts as a result who come to BB for the full BBM experience.
I could definitely see some people wanting the full BBM experience once they get a taste of it. This really could really be game changing. 1st the Android apps and now BBM for all. RIM is really making some big moves.
Supposedly it will be a paid app or a subscription and it will still be stripped down. Good. They should make it in your interest to own a blackberry, protect their own product.
Daniel said:
Supposedly it will be a paid app or a subscription and it will still be stripped down. Good. They should make it in your interest to own a blackberry, protect their own product.
Agreed. They need to make sure that BBM will make people want a Blackberry. Otherwise, having BBM on other platforms could make it easier for people to leave BB for other phones.
BarracudaBob said:
Agreed. They need to make sure that BBM will make people want a Blackberry. Otherwise, having BBM on other platforms could make it easier for people to leave BB for other phones.
Keep in mind, they’re are technology hardware company, not a software company. As much as I love the idea, you gotta protect the product. BBM is only part of the BB experience.
I’m excited for BBM to hit the other platforms. Although I agree that it should be a limited version, they need to be able to provide a good enough experience that people will actually want to move to BB for the full thing.
There are just too many people completely oblivious to the efficiency of bbm, and having it too limited will only make them shrug it off as another IM client.
This has been a long-time coming. I don’t know if BBM was ever incentive enough to get other people to switch from one smartphone to a BB, but this is definitely a smart move by RIM.
I know a number of people who would use this that aren’t Berry owners. Could definitely be a good thing.
It’s only good if it makes them at least consider a Blackberry phone.
BarracudaBob said:
It’s only good if it makes them at least consider a Blackberry phone.
Agreed. I am very interested to see how RIM scales it down enough so that it will give the smart phone world a glimpse of the blackberry experience but not hurt their selling power and the blackberry brand. I actually think it is a very fine line and I think the risk might just be greater than the potential reward.
Honestly, would you switch phones because of a chat client? I know BBM has many great features, but there’s too many chat clients out there now along with texting that if BBM was originally a Droid feature, I would still stick with my BlackBerry. That said, having BBM become cross platform would make it easier for us BlackBerry users to communicate with our friends that are reluctant to switch over. I’m not going to download and support another chat client just to communicate with a Droid/iPhone user when I can do the same via text.
Wow this is really crazy. I mean it might benefit in regards to communicating to other networks but I really hope RIM does not give all of BBM functionality to this cross-platform version.
mkconnors2008 2 years, 2 months ago.
