BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), the instant chat application, will now be available for rival devices using Google Inc's Android software and for Apple's iPhone starting this week. In an exclusive interview to CNBC-TV18's Malvika Jain, Sunil Lalvani, MD, BlackBerry says the move will create a strong, engaged social community of instant messaging users, irrespective of the already existing three platforms. "Once we have done that, the endeavour is then to launch BBM Channels", he adds.
Below is the verbatim transcript of his interview on CNBC-TV18
Q: By when can we expect BBM to become available across platforms and devices?
A: We are happy to share that BBM would now be available across Android and IOS devices so any user of Android or ice cream sandwich version 4 upwards or IOS 6 upwards can now have BBM downloaded and can have BBM services enabled on their devices starting this week.
Q: Would BBM now be available to all smart phone users without any charge or would users have to pay for it?
A: We are launching it (BBM) as a free application. Anyone who gets on to the Android player or the I-store can download it as a free application. There is going to be no charge.
Q: How would Blackberry generate revenues from BBM? To the best of my understanding the sole purpose of selling BBM as an independent service was to enhance revenues?
A: Before I talk about that element, I think it is important to understand what we are doing with BBM. BBM is an iconic product. People who use BBM or continue to use BBM swear by it, some of the strengths that BBM provides. What we have been hearing in the last one year the whole instant messaging market is extremely fragmented. You have over a billion users of IOS, Android and Blackberry there but there is a clear fragmentation of the instant messaging market.
The BBM comes with its core strengths and that's what we are looking at and taking. Looking at the iconic BBM we are making it available for Android and IOS users. In doing so our first step is to create a really strong, engaged social community of instant messaging users out there, irrespective of these three platforms.
Once we have done that the endeavour is then to launch BBM Channels. Channels are going to be the next level of evolution. It is really going to be BBM Channels talking about the socially engaged groups, brands, individuals, corporates, you can name any kind of socially engaged community can be formed and leveraged upon BBM.
Q: What is going to be Blackberry's future strategy particularly in emerging markets like India? The sense has been that now the focus of the company would have to shift to such markets.
A: You are absolutely right. There is a lot of focus on markets like India especially for services like BBM. We have seen the youth community here. The user community for both BBM and other IM tools is extremely active and a typical BBM user, we analyse this globally and India is no exception to this.
We have seen the user community, 60 million BBM users send or receive 10 billion messages a day. That's a huge number of messages and what is interesting is that half the number of these messages is read within 20 seconds. This just shows you how socially engaged the BBM user community is. What we are seeing in India is this youth community or this socially engaged user community wants to leverage the power of BBM.
Q: Now that BBM has been launched as a separate product, would it be appropriate to assume that the focus of Blackberry is now going to be more on enterprise. Also, now that competitors like Apple are targeting multiple segments in addition to the high end segment, what would your strategy be for your handset division?
A: Blackberry has always been in both the services and handset segment. So BBM as a service has been around for many years. On the enterprise side we have a lot of services that come in the form of software and services which we cater to enterprises with. The handset or the hardware business is one part pf our overall revenue model. Services and software has always been an integral part of our overall revenue model.
What we are doing is with BBM across platforms and then BBM Channels is really taking that services portfolio to the next level and expanding that portfolio to non-blackberry devices, typically Android and IOS to begin with. Similarly on the enterprise side we have the best management capabilities for blackberry devices.
What we are doing now is taking that management capability that we call as BES and have rolled out something called BES10 or Blackberry Enterprise Service 10 which gives you the ability to manage Android, IOS and Blackberry devices through a central server so what we have actually done is that in the last six months we expanded our portfolio of software services to take it across platforms so on the enterprise side we already do it with BES 10, for BBM we are now taking it for the consumer segment as well. So it is actually a two pronged strategy for both enterprise and consumer.
Q: We have been hearing about possible restructuring at Blackberry. Are we going to be seeing some lay offs?
A: There is a lot of speculation that's been happening in terms of lay offs. I wouldn't want to comment on speculation. However, definitely the company is going through a restructuring, part of rolling out of services has to do with that. The alignment of the business model for BBM across platforms and BES 10 across platforms is a part of the restructuring exercise.
Our restructuring is more aligned to the business dynamics, the market dynamics which is every user of android, IOS or blackberry out there is a potential customer for me in the enterprise segment because I can sell management MDM capabilities to them, every user of an Android or IOS devise out there is a potential customer for me for BBM services so really the restructuring is aligned more to the business dynamics and the market needs right now. That is what our restructuring is all about.
