BlackBerry is continuing its spiral downward, as CEO John Chen tries to split the company between enterprise hardware and consumer services. In the second earnings call of the year, Chen announced BBM would be coming to Windows Phone in July, adding a third OS to the mix.
Not the biggest announcement for investors to take in, considering Windows Phone accounts for less than 10 percent of the overall smartphone users. The messaging services available on Windows Phone include Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, making it hard for BBM to dig in.
We have already seen leaks and information on BBM coming to Windows Phone, but this is the first time BlackBerry has set a firm date for release. This will give the full “cross platform” integration most messaging apps already have and shows BlackBerry still wants to continue with BBM.
For anyone unaware, BBM is BlackBerry’s messaging service, for a few years they stubbornly kept it on BB OS, but last year moved it over to Android and iOS, in an effort to expand their services portfolio. BBM offers some enterprise level messaging functionality unavailable on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms.
There is currently no details on how the Windows Phone app will look or any unique features coming to this version of BBM. Microsoft doesn’t have the most open mobile OS in the world, so we expect the Windows Phone app to behave similar to the iOS and Android app.
BBM has made a big dent on iOS and Android, we are not sure on the exact download mark, but BlackBerry did announce over 20 million downloads in the opening month and we suspect it has doubled since BlackBerry’s last announcement.
Moving over to Windows Phone might not give them another 20 million, but it will give BBM the mobile cross platform certification, now to get it on the Web and on Windows and Mac OS, to make it a truly cross-platform experience.
