BlackBerry is working with other handset manufacturers to get its BlackBerry Messenger service preloaded on to their phones, according to a top executive.
“There is interest from other handset makers,” BlackBerry Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear told CNET in an interview on Wednesday.
Tear declined to comment on when exactly the cross-platform version of BBM would be available.
BlackBerry is opening up BBM in an effort to get non-BlackBerry users to start thinking about its products again, as well as grow the user base at a time when other messaging services such as WhatsApp boast a user base that exceeds 200 million people.
The danger, of course, is that customers drop their BlackBerry phones and keep their BBM accounts on rival devices. But Tear said that isn’t a concern.
“We don’t feel like that is a risk,” he said. “Obviously, if we did, we might have acted differently.”
BlackBerry executives are so confident in BlackBerry 10 that they believe its customers will stick to the platform, and that new users enticed by BBM may make the switch.
If you ask me, I don’t think this is safe for BlackBerry.
Source: CNET
