We could argue this all night, in fact we have been arguing about it for a few years now. Blackberry is struggling. It’s mostly because they decided to just launch new phones that weren’t really new. Sounds like another company I know. It also took Blackberry a very long time to get Blackberry 10 out there, which forced a lot of die-hard Blackberry fans over to Android and iOS. Fast-forward to mid-2013. Blackberry announces BBM coming to Android iOS ‘by the end of summer’. It’s officially coming Saturday for Android and Sunday on iOS. BBM was a huge reason why people still owned Blackberries, and a big thing that most former Blackberry users miss about their phone. I’ll admit, the short time I had a Blackberry which was about 4-6 months, I did enjoy using BBM. Although remembering that PIN was pretty crazy, especially when you got a new phone or even a replacement.
Since the news broke out about BBM coming to Android and iOS, we’ve seen plenty of mixed reactions on different social media sites like Google+, Twitter and Facebook. Google+ it’s mostly all “why not just use Hangouts?”. Facebook is basically split down the middle. Some want BBM, some could careless. Now on Twitter, I think I’ve only seen a couple people say that they don’t care for BBM coming to Android, while the rest are very excited. Yesterday when it was announced that BBM would be launching this weekend. Oh boy, our Twitter feed blew up (mostly people that weren’t from the US, but from Africa, India and other parts of Asia). So I think BBM could have an impact by launching on Android and iOS. But I don’t think it’s going to save the company or even help save them a bit. Blackberry really needs to invest in BBM. I think it could have an impact down the road though, since so many people used Blackberry before. But there are just too many other messaging apps around to compete with.
How many of you are going to be downloading BBM this weekend and adding all your contacts back again?