BlackBerry’s decision to bring BBM to Android and iOS was, in many senses, inevitable.

The world of mobile messaging apps has changed since BlackBerry introduced BBM in 2006. While the service still has a whole bunch of users (60 million of them, by BlackBerry’s latest count), those numbers are small compared to those of, say, WhatsApp, which claims it has 200 million active users, and China’s WeChat, which claims 190 million. There’s also Kik, which recently hit 50 million users.

Those numbers should speak for themselves: The smartphone world is moving away from BBM. But don’t tell that to BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, who’s arguing that the opposite is true.

“Why are we doing this now? It’s a statement of confidence. The BlackBerry 10 platform is so strong and support has been so good that the time is right for BBM to become and independent messaging solution,” Heins said, possibly out of sorts with reality.

Source: giaomeng/Flickr

Services like WhatsApp are rapidly eroding BlackBerry’s command over the mobile messaging market.

BlackBerry’s strategy here is clear: Rather than cede the messaging app world to the likes of WhatsApp, the company is piggybacking off the marketshare success of iOS and Android, which have many more users than BlackBerry could ever hope to attract with BlackBerry 10 alone.

In fact, BlackBerry’s move isn’t very different from its decision to allow developers to port Android apps to its own smartphone platform. As an underdog, BlackBerry doesn’t have much to lose from taking these sorts of bold moves — even if they betray some of company’s current weaknesses.

Unlike the Android move, however, BlackBerry’s decision to bring BBM cross-platform comes with its own set of risks. Despite BlackBerry’s shrinking smartphone influence, BBM remains one of the central, most enticing things about owning a BlackBerry, and it’s possible that BlackBerry could cannibalize its BB10 ambitions while trying to increase its BBM user numbers.

Still, considering how successful BBM has been over the years, maybe we should give BlackBerry the benefit of the doubt. This, could after all, turn out to be one the savviest things the company ever done: While the initial set of Android and iOS BBM functionality will be limited to chat, BlackBerry also plans to adds features like screen sharing and video chat as time goes on.

Those are the sort of things that could give BlackBerry the edge over its newer competitors. While WhatsApp and company are attracting the users, it’s BlackBerry that has the experience. The question is whether experience alone will be enough.

Bringing BBM is both smart and inevitable – but it may also be happening a few years too late.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry managed to squeeze in one surprise announcement during its huge conference keynote this morning: BlackBerry Messenger, the company’s popular messaging app, will finally jump to the iPhone and Android this summer.

This is the first time BlackBerry has brought BBM to other platforms, and it’s something the company’s fans have been begging for over the past few years. It’ll be available on iPhones running iOS 6 or greater and Android Phones running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

“We will make BBM available as the premiere multi-platform IM solution all around the globe,” said Thorsten Heins, Blackberry’s CEO, on stage today during the keynote. “Even better, it’s free.”

Heins boasted that BlackBerry Messenger already has more than 60 million users (not a huge surprise, since it’s a popular feature among the company’s 80 million users) and more than 10 billion messages are sent every day through the service.

“Why are we doing this now? It’s a statement of confidence,” Heins said. “The BlackBerry 10 platform is so strong and support has been so good that the time is right for BBM to become an independent messaging solution.”

He calmed the BlackBerry faithful by confirming that the company will still offer the “premiere and most integrated” BBM experience. Initially, iPhone and Android BBM users will be able to send chats and join BBM groups. But eventually the other platforms will see all of the BBM features out now, including screen sharing and voice and video chat.

Heins also announced BlackBerry Messenger Channels today, which is a way for brands to send messages directly to their fans. Think of it like a Facebook brand page located entirely within BBM. Brands will be able to send news updates to followers as well, so it will function almost like a news reader.

With the launch of channels and the promise of multi-platform compatibility, Blackberry Messenger is increasingly becoming the most interesting Blackberry property.

Photo: BlackBerry livestream

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

That up there is RIM’s latest teaser pic for the first BlackBerry 10 device; the image was recently thrown onto RIM’s BlackBerry 10 teaser page.

BlackBerry 10 is set to have its big, formal debut on January 30, 2013. The launch, including a full reveal of details and availability, will take place in multiple cities around the world on that date.

We don’t yet have official confirmation of what the BlackBerry 10 hardware will look like — other than the super vague image above — but the company is saying a lot about the features it intends to bring the BlackBerry faithful, including “a best in class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities,” according to a recent statement from RIM CEO Thorsten Heins. “All of this will be integrated into a user experience — the BlackBerry Flow — that is unlike any smartphone on the market today,” he added.

Here are a couple of teaser videos, as well.

The BB10 camera:

The BB10 Hub:

And more details on BB10 Flow:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Sprint has launched an innovative new service that could replace long and hard-to-remember phone numbers with simple names.

The service is called StarStar Me, and plays off the unique * character on phones that activates special features via “star codes” such as *69 to return the most recent call. For StarStar Me, pressing the star key twice followed by a name will connect you to that person.

For example, you could dial **John, if I was a Sprint customer set up with the $3/month option, to instantly connect with me. And you can do it whether or not you’re on Sprint — callers can also be Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T subscribers.

StarStar Me is an innovative service and a step in the right direction.

Why, really, should any of us have to know, or even have to save into our mobile devices, a long, complex series of digits in order to connect to another individual? It’s an archaic holdover from the early days of telephony when telephone numbers were actually a code that related to your physical location on the grid.

Moving to a system where identity supersedes specific details of technology is a good thing.

It’s what Apple is doing with iMessage, tying multiple modes of connection (emails, phone number) to one person, and delivering a message regardless of which device it actually arrives on. Google has been doing something similar for years with Grand Central, now Google Voice, which ties all your phones together with one number so that, regardless of whether you are using your mobile phone, office phone, or a temporary SIM with a different number while traveling, friends and colleagues can contact you with one number.

Eventually, these models should take the next step, similar to Sprint’s StarStar Me service: remove the number and simply tie an identity (name, username, handle) to a variety of accounts: some cellular, some email, some other communication modalities. But an identity system cannot easily be federated between multiple islands of corporate groupings.

That’s one reason why Sprint’s StarStarMe will have a tough go.

StarStar Me is provided by a mobile marketing company called Zoove, the “exclusive provider of StarStar numbers for the largest wireless operators in the United States.” You can bet that mobile giants Apple and Google both want to own identity and are not going to support a relatively small mobile marketing company’s identity system. Not when Apple has iMessage and Google has Voice, as well as possibly an iMessage/BBM competitor.

Even though they are not carriers, they may have a better chance of succeeding because identity is more than a phone number, and StarStar Me — being carrier-centric — is oriented primarily around phone numbers.

More challenges include the fact that Sprint will be charging $3/month for the service, meaning that you can have a simple identity … but it’ll cost you $36/year. I think that’s a non-starter for most consumers, and that identity should be baked into the platform. In addition, the service is voice-centric, lacking an SMS story beyond being configurable to automatically send a text message to a caller when you’re busy, and not even touching email.

StarStar Me sounds great. Someone needs to bring our islands of identity together in a comprehensive, universal way … or provide a DNS-like identity service that connects them all.

I just don’t think it’s going to be StarStar Me.

photo credit: Adam Foster | Codefor via photopin cc

Hat tip: TechCrunch

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Amid RIM’s seemingly-unending struggles, the company has seen a light: BlackBerry Messenger.

RIM says that use of its proprietary instant message service has spiked from 5.3 to 55 millions users over the past three years, even as the Blackberry’s user base and market share have been eroded by the likes of the iPhone and Android, as The Wall Street Journal reports.

The continued success of BBM gave former RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie an idea: RIM could capitalize on its popularity by licensing the software to competitors.

But the problems with this plan were immediately clear. Letting third-party companies use the service would undoubtedly increase BBM usage numbers, but it would also remove one of the BlackBerry’s most key differentiators.

That argument is a large part of why RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins axed the plan. RIM won’t be doing any licensing deals under his watch.

But where does that leave BBM? Solely in the hands of BlackBerry 10, it’s next-generation OS set for  release later this year. But with competition from Apple’s iMessage and a bevy of other iOS and Android messaging apps at all-time high, RIM is going to have a hard time attracting users back to BBM no matter what operating system its running on.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Research In Motion, the company behind the ailing Blackberry platform, has hired a law firm to help it with a company-wide restructuring plan aimed at making the company profitable again. The plan could include selling off resources, seeking joint ventures, or licensing its patents.

After losing a significant portion of its market share to Apple’s iPhone and smartphones running Google’s Android operating system, RIM has been looking for ways to boost revenue. Previously, RIM had been in talks with major cell phone carriers to include some of its network services, such as the popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), on competitors’ devices. However, this plan was being spearheaded by Jim Balsillie, RIM’s recently ousted co-CEO. Since January, RIM has been under the direction of new CEO Thorsten Heins and it’s uncertain if Heins or the company’s restructuring will continue along the path set out by Balsillie.

“This is a very mature strategy and RIM was very far down the road with a lot of those discussions with carriers,” a source told Thomson Reuters.

For RIM, its latest restructuring efforts can’t come quick enough, as it’s losing large sums of cash fast. In its most recent quarter, RIM posted a $125 million dollar loss, and before that it took an even larger hit due to its underwhelming sales of the PlayBook tablet computer. RIM’s stock has dropped 75 percent in the last year.

According to the source at Thomson Reuters, an abundance of investment banks have approached RIM during the past few months all advocating to fill the role as RIM’s financial adviser. However RIM is not expected to hire any bankers until it has decided to sell off any major company assets or gets a bid for takeover interest in the company. The law firm contracted to consult on the restructuring is Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP.

Rebuilding image via ShutterStock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It was a bit of a surprise when former Research in Motion co-chief, Jim Balsillie, resigned from the company at the end of March, but a new report today offers some insight into his departure.

Balsillie was working on radically reinventing RIM by opening up its network and services to carriers and other platforms, including the much-beloved BlackBerry Messenger, Reuters reports. Not surprisingly, new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, and other high-level execs (including Balsillie’s former partner Mike Lazaridis), vetoed that grand plan. Instead, they chose to focus the company’s energy on its upcoming BlackBerry 10 devices.

Balsillie was courting major carriers in North America and Europe to let them use RIM’s network on non-BlackBerry devices. As Reuter’s Alastair Sharp writes, “The plan would have let the carriers use the RIM network to offer inexpensive data plans, limited to social media and instant messaging, to entice low-tier customers to upgrade from no-frills phones to smartphones.”

Such a move would have been a major change for RIM, which has so far kept its proprietary network locked to its BlackBerry devices. For carriers, it would have given them an inexpensive way to gain customers without saturating their own networks (RIM’s network would have done the heavy lifting). For RIM, it would have separated the company from the business of making and selling BlackBerry devices.

The move would have made plenty of sense, especially since RIM was forced to delay its next-generation BlackBerry 10 devices until the end of this year. But by reinventing itself, RIM would have admitted a slight defeat in the hardware world, something the company likely isn’t prepared to do yet (even though it’s obvious to everyone else).

Notably, Balsillie was also offering to bring RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service to other platforms as well, something that has been rumored for a while now. The company has already branched out somewhat with its BlackBerry Fusion service, which lets enterprises manage iOS and Android devices with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

Balsillie’s plan could have been a sweet deal for carriers, but as Reuters rightly points out, some may have been worried about the stability of RIM’s network, which suffered a major crash last year.

Sources tell Reuters Balsillie was chatting with executives from AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, and others about the deal. RIM already offers cheap plans in some countries with social and messaging, and the sources say it had developed a way to bring that service to iOS and Android. Unfortunately for Balsillie, RIM’s new CEO and executive board killed his effort before he could open up the company to other platforms.

Photo via Nan Palmero/Flickr

RIM first showed-off its new BBM Music app back in late August, but it is just now rolling out to all users. The service costs $5 a month and works differently than other music services.

Each paid user of BBM Music can pick 50 songs to post to their BlackBerry Messenger profile, and anyone who is friends with that user can then listen to the posted songs. So, the more friends you have on BBM Music, the more music you can listen to. Users are allowed to swap out 25 of the posted tracks each month.

The company officially describes the service as such:

BBM Music is a BBM-connected social music service that allows BBM and BlackBerry smartphone users to discover, play and grow their music collections together. In other words, BBM Music helps you connect with your friends around music on a whole new level.

The introduction of BBM Music isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but RIM is exploring new ways to connect with (and hopefully retain) owners of its smartphones. RIM faces stiff competition from Apple’s iPhone 4S and various Samsung and Motorola Android phones, and has gone through a rough patch the past few months. Not only did the company experience a disastrous worldwide outage recently, but its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet had a considerable OS update pushed back to February.

Personally, I think the BBM Music service is going to be a considerable flop because there are already better options for on-demand music streaming for BlackBerry devices. Spotify debuted its BlackBerry app just a few weeks ago, and Rdio and Rhapsody have high-quality apps that provide a better music-focused experience. Most importantly, they don’t limit you to just 50 tracks.

Watch the offical BBM Music intro video below for more details:

RIM has been struggling lately to show that it’s committed to fighting against the gains of Google Android and Apple iOS with full force. Adding a new way for accessing media on its devices could be one way to attract new consumers and retain those who are still loyal.

“More than 45 million customers already love the social communication benefits delivered through BBM, and we are thrilled to be extending the experience into a uniquely social and interactive music service,” said Mike Lazaridis, RIM President and co-CEO, in a statement.

The launch of a music service from RIM has been rumored for quite some time and official word it was around the corner came last week.

The BBM Music service costs $4.99 per month but is structured very differently from other music services. Each user can pick up to 50 songs to post to their BlackBerry Messenger profile, and anyone who is friends with that user can listen to the posted songs. So, the more friends you have on BBM, the more music you can listen to. Users are allowed to swap out 25 of the posted tracks each month.

Users will be able to pick from “millions of songs,” as RIM has signed agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI.

A closed beta of the service starts today in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Later this year, the service is also expected to be turned on in Australia, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and UAE.

BBM Music is an interesting social twist on the music app. You’re essentially encouraged to pick out songs not only that you like but that you might want to introduce to friends as well. But is it enough to make a difference in the already established music app landscape?

I think the service will have a hard time catching on, at least in the U.S. There are already many music services out there that let users listen to an unlimited amount of music through smartphone apps, which is much more attractive than just 50 songs and whatever your friends happen to pick.

Right now, music services like Rhapsody, Grooveshark, Rdio, Pandora, Slacker and Iheartradio all offer streaming music apps for BlackBerry, iOS, and Android. Spotify and MOG are both available for iOS and Android devices and likely have BlackBerry apps in the pipeline.

What do you think of RIM’s new music service? Will you subscribe?

More screenshots from the BlackBerry Music app inside Messenger follow:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion said Monday evening that it will cooperate after police said BlackBerry Messenger played an instrumental part in coordinating the violent rioting and looting in London during the past few days.

In a statement to VentureBeat, RIM said:

“As in all markets around the world where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials. Similar to other technology providers in the UK we comply with The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and co-operate fully with the Home Office and UK police forces.”

The company declined to elaborate further, but the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act does allow police to make companies hand over information, so RIM could have to give up information it has on specific users.

BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, is a free, private messaging service that only works on BlackBerry devices. What makes the network special—and easy to abuse—is that BBM messages are encrypted and untraceable to authorities. RIM has said in the past that it can’t unscramble messages sent via BBM, but the scope of the company’s capabilities in this area remain unclear.

Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have also been blamed for amplifying users’ messages. Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said that “inflammatory” and “inaccurate” messages on Twitter were also to blame for the riots, according to the Guardian. “Social media and other methods have been used to organize these levels of greed and criminality,” Kavanagh said, according to the paper.

The riots in London have been raging since Saturday, and it was reported today that a 26-year-old man who was shot during the riots has died, becoming the first death attributed to the mass disorder. Police are expecting more disturbances this evening.

The negative press toward BBM certainly doesn’t help RIM, which has struggled lately to keep consumers interested in its devices. The company just launched five new models of BlackBerry 7 devices, but many smartphone buyers in the U.S. and around the world have shown a preference for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices.

I’d like to point out that although smartphone technology and social networks helped in coordinating the riots in London, these tools shouldn’t be blamed for actually causing the disorder. In the absence of BBM or Twitter, users could have used text messages or phone calls to coordinate.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Just after Apple announced iMessage app in iOS 5, it appears that Google has its own Android messaging client in the works, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The paper didn’t have any additional details on Google’s messaging app, but just like iMesssage, it’s reportedly being positioned as an answer to Research in Motion’s popular BlackBerry Messenger app.

Google’s new messaging app could fall under the Google Talk name, but it will need to do much more than that service, which is based on the Jabber IM protocol. IM is less convenient for mobile devices since it requires a steady data connection to remain logged in. To function as a texting replacement, Google needs to make sure its messaging app can accurately tell users when messages are sent, delivered and read.

For consumers, these new apps will offer faster and cheaper integrated ways to message friends. But the outlook is less rosy for carriers, who will likely see their lucrative text messaging revenue take a major dip. The messaging apps will move texting-like activity into cellular data networks and out of carrier’s aging SMS networks.

Consumers currently pay anywhere from 20 cents per text to $20 a month for unlimited texting on SMS networks. Most of that money is pure profit for the carriers: a dollar of SMS charges can produce around 80 cents of profit, while carriers only see around 35 cents of profit from a dollar of data or voice fees, analysts at UBS tell the WSJ.

The new messaging apps will further diminish the growth of texting. AT&T’s year-to-year texting growth was 21 percent in the first quarter, down from 41 percent last year, according to UBS.

Consumers will still need to rely on traditional texts to message friends on less advanced phones, but those devices won’t be sticking around for much longer in their current form. Eventually, even dumbphones will move to smarter platforms like Android and take advantage of ubiquitous data networks.

I won’t shed many tears for the carriers in this situation. They’ve been making a killing by overcharging consumers for texting, and it was simply a matter of time, especially with the rapid success of RIM’s Blackberry Messenger service, before more efficient messaging solutions appeared on data networks. We’ve already seen third-party messaging apps like Kik take off over the last year, but having integrated messaging in iOS and Android will signal the death of SMS once and for all.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive mobile trends at our fourth annual MobileBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the rise of 4G and how it delivers the promise of true mobile computing. We’re also accepting entries for our mobile startup competition at the show. MobileBeat is co-located with our GamesBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

RIM, maker of the popular BlackBerry devices, announced Tuesday that it has acquired social gaming company Scoreloop. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Scoreloop’s focus is to help mobile game developers with add social elements and in-app billing to their apps. Now the company will expand its focus to help BlackBerry’s application platform incorporate those features and take on the difficult task of catching up BlackBerry’s app abilities to that of its peers.

“We’re excited that the Scoreloop team is joining the BlackBerry Developer team and bringing their expertise in creating social and collaborative gaming toolkits for mobile developers to the BlackBerry platform,” RIM wrote on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog. “We look forward to working with the team at Scoreloop to provide tools that will further enable our developer community to take gaming to a new level of social integration on the BlackBerry platform.”

Scoreloop did not offer a BlackBerry version of its SDK before the announcement, but Marc Gumpinger, Scoreloop’s CEO, said on the company’s homepage that the its future BlackBerry solution “will be unparalleled.” Surprisingly, it also noted that the company will still offer a “cross platform approach” to assist developers from many platforms to make gaming more social.

The move is important if RIM intends to stimulate app development and it’s likely RIM will use Scoreloop’s SDK to improve its BBM social platform. At this point, RIM’s BlackBerry game and app offerings appear dramatically behind those of Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

Even with the BlackBerry Playbook tablet selling surprisingly well, every move RIM makes looks like it’s playing catch up instead of moving mobile technology forward.