ORLANDO, Fla. — BlackBerry has announced that
it's bringing its BBM chat platform to multiple
platforms and devices this summer, including iOS
and Android.
This move has been rumored for, literally, years,
yet the announcement still seemed to take the
audience by surprise. BBM will come to iOS 6
devices and will work on Android 4.0 Ice Cream
Sandwich and higher. The app will be free and
bring cross-platform messaging between
BlackBerry, iOS and Android users.
BBM has 60 million active monthly users —
certainly nothing to sneeze at — but in the years
since it reigned supreme, the messaging space
has drastically changed. Apple's BBM copycat
service iMessage boasts over 140 million users.
Other services, including MessageMe, GroupMe
and Facebook Messenger boast equally large and
growing users bases.
And then there's WhatsApp. More than 10 billion
WhatsApp messages are sent each day and its
user base is easily in the hundreds of millions.
The service is widely successful in emerging
markets — exactly the markets that BlackBerry
cites as its core BBM user base. WhatsApp is also
on a ton of platforms — including Windows
Phone, Symbian and, yes, BlackBerry 10.
BlackBerry will argue that BBM is more than just
chat — it has groups, the ability to send files and
more — but, for users on other platforms, that
might be just a semantic difference.
The proposition of bringing BBM to iOS and
Android was something that made sense — and
was potentially disruptive — back in 2009 or
even 2010. In 2013, the onus will be on
BlackBerry — and, really, BBM users — to
convince other users to switch and use the app.
At a press session after the announcement,
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said that he
believed a core differentiator between BBM and
WhatsApp is that BBM is free. Of course, there
are other free services out there, including
Facebook Messenger. Still, Heins has a point
about free being a potentially big driver in
adoption.
One area where BBM could improve its cross-
platform experience is around the idea of the
PIN. Remembering and finding user PIN numbers
can be difficult. WhatsApp and iMessage are so
successful in part because these services employ
a user's existing phone number. In the case of
iMessage, the experience is actually seamless
with SMS, working in the same application and
the same way.
Regardless, the crowded messaging space just
got a bit more crowded.
What do you
think about BBM coming to iOS and Android?

mashable.com/2013/05/14/bbm-ios-android/