Recently, BlackBerry's instant messaging application, BlackBerry Messenger, landed for the first time on smartphones with Android operating systems and iOS operating systems. After this arrival it was also expected that the application would be available on the Windows Phone operating system. But, according to David Proulx - the director of business development at BlackBerry -, the BBM application (BlackBerry Messenger) will not reach the latter operating system since the company has concluded that Windows Phoneit is not widely accepted in the marketplace to be considered in BBM's development plans.
It is at least curious that a company that is going through its worst financial moments decides to launch this message that seeks to show the lack of demand for Windows Phone among users. And even more curious is that at the end of last year it was known that Windows Phone covers ten percent of the market share of mobile telephony in Europe, while BlackBerry was one of the few companies that experienced a decrease in its share of market compared to 2012.
BlackBerry Messenger is an application that somehow pretends to be an alternative to the classic and popular WhatsApp or Line applications. One of the most striking aspects of the BlackBerry chat application is the possibility of exchanging messages with other users simply by providing an identification code (BB PIN or BlackBerry ID); that is, with this application it is not necessary to reveal the phone number when talking to other people. For the rest, this instant messaging application does not include any significant news that could represent a real competition to the most popular alternatives that we have previously mentioned.
The version of BlackBerry Messenger that is currently available for Android and iOS has a design very similar to the one that can be found in the BlackBerry 10 phone application, a mobile that incorporates a touch screen in which the physical keyboard to which we are accustomed disappears this company. It is a simple adaptation that includes the peculiarity of being able to add and chat with people who have a phone with an operating system other than ours.
As indicated by the company itself during the launch of this application, in the first eight hours of BBM's life on Android and iOS, more than five million downloads of the application were made. A striking figure, true, but it is also a data far from the more than 400 million active users that WhatsApp has.
In short, for now Windows Phone users will have to wait for their operating system to be popular enough for BlackBerry to decide to get down to business developing an adaptation of its instant messaging application.
