Yes, the 10 million downloads of the Blackberry Messenger app (BBM) on Android and iOS was impressive, but the announcement at Nokia World 2013 by WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum shows that the Canadian messaging platform has a long way to go before it can be considered significant in the modern market.
With 350 million monthly active users, the Santa Clara based WhatsApp is one of the leading messaging platforms that are vying for attention alongside BBM, and when you start to look down the features list of other apps, the gaps in the BBM application are clear.
Not everyone is going to be looking for calendar or contact sharing, video sharing, location sharing, no options for video or audio chat, and the ability to search for friends is still historically limited to sharing BBM PIN numbers of QR style barcodes. BBM needs to reach out beyond the BlackBerry faithful, and when they do the historical greatness of BBM will not count for much.
Very few people are going to be running multiple messaging platforms. For BBM to grow, they will need to reclaim old BBM users who have moved to Android and iOS, they will need to advertise and attract consumers who have never worked with an messaging platform, and they will need to capture users from other systems such as WhatsApp and bring them into the BBM system.
Which means Blackberry needs to be doing it not just as good as the competition, but better. They need to lower every barrier to switching, and they need an experience that is not missing any elements of other system while presenting a clean and fast user interface.
The first version of BBM for Android and iOS is a marker in the ground, but some rapid development and fast update cycles are going to be needed to first keep pace and then overtake the competition
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