BlackBerry makes a comeback
As an android user for as long as I can remember, I had never gotten the chance to use the BBM service that only BlackBerry devices offered back when it was popular a few years ago. But when BBM was recently made available to Android and Apple users, I am finally able to use features such as chat service and barcode scanning — at zero cost.
After losing its ground in the international market awhile back, I think that the new-found popularity of BBM has definitely helped in bettering the market’s impression of BlackBerry as a whole. This can be evident by the fact that there has been an additional 20 million active BBM users after the free offering has been launched.
However popular BlackBerry has become once again, there are many uncertainties that still lie ahead. The main concern currently is how BlackBerry is able to grow in the market and sustain profits WHILE offering the free service. At the same time, BlackBerry also has to compete head-to-head with WhatsApp, a free and downloadable service that offers similar features as BBM, but has more than four times its active monthly users. To increase its revenues, I think that BlackBerry should invest on connecting its chat app service to social networks in order to keep the contents relevant to users. Similar to social networks, users may be much more interested in using BlackBerry’s service if there is a profile for each user to upload and share their photos and videos with all their contacts.
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