BlackBerry to offer BBM to Windows Phone, Nokia X series

BANGALORE: BlackBerry Ltd said on Monday it will make its messaging service BBM available to Microsoft’s Windows Phone and the upcoming Nokia X platforms in the coming months.

BlackBerry Messaging, or BBM, is a messaging platform that offers collaboration tools such as BBM Groups, BBM Voice and BBM Channels and competes with services such as WhatsApp, which Facebook bought last week for $19 billion (`1.17 lakh crore).

BBM will be available as a free download from the Windows Phone Store this summer, while BBM for Nokia X will be available from the Nokia Store when the Nokia X platform launches, BlackBerry said in a statement.

BBM was a pioneering mobile-messaging service, but it has failed to keep pace with WhatsApp and others, in part because BlackBerry had long refused to open the service to users on other platforms.

WhatsApp, with a user base of about 450 million, on the other hand has grown rapidly. Its service works on Apple Inc’s iOS The world’s biggest messaging service WhatsApp will add voice calls to its product in the second quarter of this year, its chief executive Jan Koum said on Monday. “We are driven by the mission that people should be able to stay in touch anywhere and affordably. Our goal is to be on every mobile phone in the world,” Koum said on Monday in Barcelona. REUTERS

platform, Google Inc’s marketdominating Android operating system and with devices powered by both the Windows and BlackBerry operating systems.

BBM remains popular, even though BlackBerry devices have waned in popularity. Late last year, the company finally opened the messaging platform to users of iPhones and Android devices, and the number of the service’s active users has grown to more than 80 million.