This is really late for my third assigned blog post, but better late than never right?

Last week, BlackBerry released its BBM messaging service for iOS and Android. This highly anticipated move netted 10 million downloads on day one of release, and has since reached 20 million users as of today. My question is, what does Blackberry hope to achieve from that?

What distinguishes BBM from its competitors such as Whatsapp and WeChat is that it is free, and its interface is much more streamlined than any other data messaging service on the market. It therefore possesses a competitive advantage over its other messaging services, but in the end, how is BlackBerry going to make money off making BBM available to non-BlackBerry users?

Since BlackBerry Entered the smartphone market late, marketing from the two tech giants Google and Apple have already shaped customers to see iPhone and Android phones as their trusted choices for smartphones. Though BBM would raise more awareness of BlackBerry as a company, I don’t feel that anyone would ever look to BlackBerry as a possible alternative because they have already been shaped to side with Apple and Samsung for example. It’s difficult to capitalize on a free app. Any attempt to monetize the app by adding a subscription fee or in-a

pp advertisements would more than likely cause BBM’s subscriber base to plummet, if not disappear entirely. We will see in the coming months how it all plays out for BlackBerry.

reference article: http://www.knowyourmobile.com/blackberry/20380/bbm-android-iphone-its-finally-here