23 September, 2013
The struggle for relevance and market share among mobile platform providers continues. Samsung and Apple are holding on to major market share and Techno is also making a stealthy incursion into the market as well.
What has not changed is the fact that the customer is still king and the consumption habits are the determinants for mobile service and its add-on apps provision. The magic of constant innovation, advertising and persistence in this regard is what has continued to keep these companies alive.
Ontario, Canada-based former mobile phone giant, Blackberry Limited, formerly known as Research in Motion, has announced that accessing Blackberry Messenger would no longer be tied to the ownership of a Blackberry phone. The news is one of the most significant in the industry thus far this year.
Until recently, before the decline in the revenue of Blackberry Limited, Blackberry had a tight grip on the market and the sales and popularity in Nigeria was premised on the novelty that came with its being first to provide instant messaging. For once, it was a freedom of sorts from the cost that came with paying N10 for text messages within same network and N15 across networks before the recent change in price to N4.
That users can now ‘port’ to BBM using their Android phones running on Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean and/or Apple phone running on iOS 6 and 7 means BBM has now become an independent messaging template.
This recent stint by Blackberry is a posture that says it is succumbing to the reality of how things have remarkably changed in the industry. It is a sincere fight for survival, similar to that of an Olympian swimmer in brackish water swamp. What, however, we cannot take away from BlackBerry is its pioneering role in the field of mobile instant communication. Blackberry Limited, owners of the Blackberry brand, had redefined mobile telephony and social media use.
News of the availability of BBM for other users first caught public attention last May; and after a long wait of five months, it’s finally available. Starting on Saturday 21st September, Android users can now download the application from the Google Play Store and iPhone users get to download same a day after. This would allow for chats on two of its main rival platforms — Android and iPhone. Shut out from this are Windows phone produced by Microsoft.
BBM, as on Blackberry phones, allows users to chat, share files in audio and photo forms, keep conversation on in a group of up to 30 other users, broadcast messages to all users on one’s BB contact list, post status updates and read those of others, change display pictures at will and every user has an eight-character unique Personal Identification Number. These are the exact features it will be availing users who download same.
All features of a good chat platform are also activated with this new offering of BBM — knowledge that the message has been delivered, read and is being replied or not by the receiver are available. BBM is popular and it is perhaps responsible for why, before the release date, app stores were loaded with several fakes.
The first Blackberry device — an email pager — was available in the market in 1999. BBM was introduced in 2006, and by 2012, BB had sold 200 million phones, with its current figure of users placed at about 80 million. Six years down the line, a lot has changed. BBM now has to compete with several other substitutes for it — Whatsapp, Facebook chat, Google Chat, Viber chat and a number of other chat platforms.
Mobile network providers have been the major loser in terms of revenues from SMS. BB Limited is the latest hit. Whatsapp, BBM’s arch rival, claims a figure of about 200 million users currently, a far one from BBM’s.
Google is rumoured to be interested in acquiring Whatsapp, especially since it ranks as the second most downloaded app on Google Play. As BBM continues to struggle for a market share, this move may be a potent one in an attempt for a comeback. What is not clear is how this would affect the sales of Blackberry phones.
To maintain growth, the company will be offering hardware and software solutions to other firms. For those concerned about privacy, it is only expected that the use of a PIN, which BBM offers, would appeal, as against Whatsapp and others which are activated using mostly a mobile phone number.
Blackberry phones also have the all-touch screen device and physical keyboard model, which appeals to a section of the market. The Z and Q series phones are attempts to adapt sleek features that other smart phones are known for. The complaint has been about the quick draining of the battery and the dependence on extra battery or constant power source for BB users. For the African market, the flat monthly data tariff of the phone would still make it appealing.
Thoston Heins, Blackberry’s Chief Executive, in saying “We will make BBM available as the premiere multi-platform IM solution all around the globe,” is anchoring this on the belief that consumers would either prefer BBM to Whatsapp et al; or desire to add it to their collection of apps. The reality is that instant messaging is no longer novel for Android and iPhone users.
The download figure in the coming days would tell if this move by the smart phone company was a smart one. The industry would have to wait and see if several contacts would be transferred from BB phones to Android and iphones using the Bluetooth setting.
If things go south, it may mean that the only place where Blackberry phones would remain popular is the technology museum. Already, 40 per cent of the company’s staff are expected to be dismissed before 2014. If this move falters, then may be the figure would be higher than this and would mean that BB is on a slow path to extinction.
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