BlackBerry Confirms BBM for Windows Phone to be Launched in July

Finally, some good news for Windows Phone fans, as BlackBerry has just confirmed that it will bring its BBM service to Microsoft’s mobile platform in July.

Although we have known that BBM will arrive on Windows Phone this summer, BlackBerry did no share any details on when exactly it would be available, so now at least we have a timeframe to look for the application. The information has been confirmed by BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen during the company’s earning calls, CrackBerry reports. Along with this short statement, Chen also shared some info on the number of users that BBM now has and what BlackBerry’s future plans regarding the instant messaging service are. Well, it appears that BlackBerry Messenger now has 160 million registered users. However, he has also confirmed that BBM has only 85 million active monthly users. While the number may seem high at first glance, let’s not forget that WhatsApp has recently announced that it has reached the 450 million active users milestone, while WeChat and Facebook Messenger have a few hundred million active users as well.

Competition is tough on the instant messaging market, but BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen is optimistic and says that he expects the number of active users for BBM to rise once the application launches on Windows Phone platform. This does make sense, but the increase will not really threaten its rivals’ market shares. According to Chen, once BBM for Windows Phone gets released, the instant messaging service should reach 100 million active monthly users. BlackBerry Messenger was received with tremendous excitement by both Android and iOS users last year when it got released on Google Play and App Store. However, the applications are still not on par with BBM for BlackBerry, which is one of the reasons that the Canadian company lost quite a few users who turned to other alternatives like WhatsApp, Snapchat or even Facebook Messenger.

The good news is that BlackBerry is working hard to bring the missing features on both Android and iOS platforms in the next couple of months. Here is hoping that that will happen sooner rather than later. On a side note, John Chen also stated during the earning calls that if BlackBerry managed to ship 10 million smartphones in a year, the company’s mobile phones division would be profitable. He also confirmed that this was the model that BlackBerry would try to follow in the coming months and years. This should put an end to BlackBerry fans’ worries about the company’s survival, at least for a while.

BBM logo
Image credits to BlackBerry

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