General Consultant Discussion

For those of you familar with BB, is this worth anything to those of us using Skype etc on Android? http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/27/blackberry-reportedly-considering-turning-bbm-into-spinoff-subsidiary-which-explains-cross-platform-launch/

I've always found Skype to be very wonky on mobile. It seems to have a great foothold on desktop where it's very solid performer. I can't see BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) doing much when there are already very well entrenched players like Whatsapp (and several dozen more). Some of what BB is fantasizing about doing with BBM (channels) brings it into the direct line of fire of Twitter/Facebook. I can't see it getting much traction and if it does the monetization will be tough. Given that most all NEW smartphone plans include unlimited voice and SMS I think the days of worry about per text costs are coming to a close (unless you do a lot of texting overseas which is VERY expensive). How many people does the average person text with? And steering all those people to a new platform is not always easy. TL;DR - I think this is wishful thinking.

Once Google adds SMS / MMS integration to hangouts it will be even tougher for BBM to get a foothold.