RIM’s CEO Thorsten Heins was visiting in Jakarta, Indonesia yesterday and dropped some interesting quotes. The Jakarta Post is reporting that Heins said RIM is planning on taking BBM beyond just text and beyond just communication into ecommerce. This is the example Heins gave:
“Think about transacting money. This is one element in which you could have a huge BBM population in Indonesia transferring money from one partner to another,” he said. Heins added that the heavy usage of BBM by BlackBerry smartphone owners in Indonesia made the country “so important” as an “innovation ground for BBM”.
Supposedly the BlackBerry 10 version of BBM will support “enhanced communication activities beyond texting.” Heins also reiterated that the launch of BlackBerry 10 is coming in Q1 and “The first countries to receive the BlackBerry 10 are our most important and biggest markets, and we aim to strongly support those markets.” He also confirmed that we will be seeing about 8 weeks between the full touchscreen and QWERTY device launch.
