Many moons ago, there was a war between instant message clients. Americans used AIM, Europe and Asia used MSN, and some laggards swore an allegiance to ICQ. That same war is being replayed today, but with OTT messaging apps. What’s OTT? It stands for over-the-top, which in this case means on top of an operator’s network. Someone like Verizon built a really expensive network with hopes of charging you a nickel per text message, but nope, WhatsApp, LINE, Viber, and many others came out and made messaging free.
BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion, wants to get in on this game, despite the fact that it’s 2013 and less than 70 million use BBM, whereas WhatsApp has over 300 million users and LINE will hit that same number by the end of this year at the rate it’s growing. Does BBM have a chance if it’s made available on other platforms? I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the answer is yes, but only if BlackBerry doesn’t screw this up, which is asking a lot. Right now LINE and WhatsApp are big, but their brands aren’t really well known. BlackBerry on the other hand, they have massive cachet, despite being irrelevant in today’s smartphone race. We’ll see what happens. Right now the app isn’t out yet, but it should be in 2013.
