As per a report by CNET, the company is already talking to certain smartphone makers to pre-install BBM on smartphones running of competing platforms. This bit of information was shared by Kristian Tear, who is Chief Operating Officer of BlackBerry in an interview to CNET. However, he refused to divulge by when we can expect these smartphones to be available in the market.
BlackBerry is expected to roll out BBM application for Android and iOS on June 27, 2013. BBM is a popular instant messaging application that lets BlackBerry users seamlessly exchange texts, audio, videos and pictures with each other.
Presently, there are plenty of rival applications such as WeChat, Nimbuzz and WhatsApp in the market. All these rival applications are available across platforms. By making BBM available across platforms and by pre-installing this app on rival platforms, BlackBerry is trying to expand the reach of this application.
As per the last official numbers, BBM has an active user base of 61 million customers around the world and approximately 70 percent of the BlackBerry users use it daily. The company had rolled out an update for BBM in December 2012, in form of BlackBerry Messenger 7. The most notable addition in the BlackBerry Messenger 7 was that it supported voice calls over Wi-Fi.
BlackBerry had launched a brand new operating system, BlackBerry 10 on January 30. The company has already launched two brand new smartphones, Z10 and Q10 running on this platform. The company is also expected to be working on a new flagship smartphone, which is touted to be A10 and is likely to be launched in November 2013.