According to Bloomberg, BlackBerry has fallen the most in a week as stock dropped 4%. This comes after the recent announcements of the BlackBerry Q5 for select markets and now the company’s plan to make BlackBerry’s messaging service (BBM) available to iOS and Android devices.
While shares of the Ontario based company have increased to 28% in 2013, BlackBerry’s decision to ‘share’ its free messaging service, similar to that of WhatsApp, will mean losing control of one of its most exclusive and valuable services, that arguably made BlackBerry such a popular and appealing device when it first emerged.
BMM will become available, with the approval of Google and Apple of course, in the coming months and will be compatible with Android version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above and iOS 6 and above.
In the announcement BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said “It’s time to bring BBM to a greater audience. We’re starting with messaging and groups, but we’ll bring voice, screen share, and of course, channels later on.”
According to Heins, the move is largely due to BlackBerry’s confidence in BlackBerry 10.
As an Android or iOS user would you be interested in using BBM?
