[xanadome]

Well, Alex (of all medium, on twitter) or not, I just watched a news flash, reporting that halifax put a $4.7B offer on the table today. Right now, Bbry is in shamble, and I would not trust anything coming out of Bbry, at least for now.

[RyanGermann]

I'm in the "BBM shouldn't have gone multi-platform at all" camp... well, they should have kept it as an option in their back pocket, not announcing that before conceding that BB10 had failed in the market and that BB Ltd. needed to look for new business models, which included multi-platform monetization of BBM. (Actually, when I heard BBM was going multi-platform, my absolutely first reaction was "So, I guess BB10 device sales are really terrible.") As it is, BB was repeating "business as usual" then came out with "BBM4ALL" which I think obviously contradicts that: a platform exclusive competitive advantage going multi-platform? bzzzz-click-wwrrrrr does not compute.

Personally I think they should be BBM-to-landlines phone calls and charging a teensy-weensy subscription fee a-la Skype, and also releasing Windows / Mac / Linux clients... charge $2 per month (undercutting current Skype rates) but also having a far better platform (Skype is so laggy and drop-out-y that it's almost unusable sometimes).

With BB being private and recast as "Prosumer", I'm not sure if BBM4ALL actually even makes sense any more. If the idea is to keep your secure communications secure within your environment, letting people tweet your intellectual property or accidentally BBM a key internal asset to their "I Like Turtles" BBM group seems, well, antithetical to the "Prosumer" space.

So, if the new buyers of BB actually released "You know that BBM4ALL thing? Well, no." It would not surprise me, but it would upset a lot of people but who cares, they aren't even their target customers any more (non BB platform) or even PAYING consumers. It should be available for $20, not free. If you REALLY want BBM, you get it free with your BB device, or you can pay $20 for it on Android or iPhone. Microsoft includes Office for free with Windows RT tablets, but I guarantee that the rumoured Office apps for Android and iOS won't be free on those platforms.

If BB still wants to have their Prosumer cake and eat their Consumer cake too, then they will forge ahead with BBM on Android and iOS... I've seen management do that too often but haven't seen it work out well (that is, rather than focus like a laser with a shark attached to it on their primary business, they want to appeal to customers outside their initial core target market) but I for one think they should consider making Free BBM a BB-brand device exclusive, or possibly extend something like the Samsung thing and make it available only pre-installed on new Samsung devices, which Samsung will pay BB at LEAST $5 per device: if they can't get the revenue from the device sale (or, at this point, take the inventory mark down on the device sale) they should get SOMETHING from the non BB users for the best messaging app there is. It doesn't have to be free to be best, but then they'd better darn well build it out to be far and away better than the competition, which BBM barely, just barely, is right now.

Monetizing BBM via ads or whatever is FaceBook and Google's end-consumer revenue generating strategy, not what a company that's focused on corporate / enterprise / prosumer does.

Might be best to spin BBM off as a stand alone CON-sumer focused company with BB continuing to sell MDM and top-tier devices into the enterprise / prosumer space and leave the revenues generated by "IMVU" banner adds to a separate consumer focused "BBM Inc."

[currentodysseys]

LOL.

I'll take him for his word, but i don't begrudge anyone the right to be suspicious of statements from BBRY.

Thank you for some actual logical stance in here! glad you came along.

[sixpacker]

LOL.

I'll take him for his word, but i don't begrudge anyone the right to be suspicious of statements from BBRY.

I believe the guy. The issue is did someone in the upper echelons pull the rug without Alex knowing?

[Fuzzballz]

Is it me or all of BlackBerry Limited's apps in Google Play Store are gone? This doesn't look good for Cross platform BBM

OMG it appears you're right

[Mr.Willie]

Lol! They should make a really dark sitcom about BBRY. Like the main character is some middle manager, and every week the CEO comes up with yet another zany scheme to save the company. Hilarity ensues as the unbelievably incompetent staff manage to **** up yet another market shattering idea!

I'm thinking The Office meets Yes, Prime Minister...

It has already been done. it was called Dilbert. It's still available on Netflix in the US.

[AlexXF]

After BBRY sold for less, is there anyone who believe in 'leak' problem with cross-platform BBM launch?

All of this has been a stock game to low price for BBRY. Sabotage to drop stock price.

You're just blackberried again, as with BB10 for PlayBook!

[southlander]

Why... Couldn't... BBRY... Get... Email and BBM.... working..... on the Playbook?

Probably the same reason the BlackBerry 10 browser and BlackBerry 10 itself never made it to the PlayBook. They didn't care to or at least not hard enough. They saw the PlayBook sales tanking, saw it as dead end and allocated limited resources to BlackBerry 10 only.

BBM works fine between BlackBerry 10 and BBOS devices. In fact it works great. And one uses Java and the other does not.

Z10STL100-4/10.2.0.1443

[nikosg21]

Just because this thread got huge and i dont have time to read all of it....cross platform bbm has not been cancelled or indefinitely suspended.. its coming like it was intended and the main issue for the delay is close to being resolved. Should have an update today ! cheers everyone

[dacunto]

There you go amazes me that an employee of blackberry takes time to reply to forum posts good work!

yet nothing still posted officially. Forum post or not, how do we even know that was the real deal. Could be anyone saying he is Alex

[Fuzzballz]

I'm the real Alex! Don't listen to that other Alex.

-Alex

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

After BBRY sold for less, is there anyone who believe in 'leak' problem with cross-platform BBM launch?

All of this has been a stock game to low price for BBRY. Sabotage to drop stock price.

You're just blackberried again, as with BB10 for PlayBook!

Very dangerous to play those types of games... lot of regulators out there that really like putting CEO's in jail. It really just seemed like BB operating business as usual.

STORM, PlayBook, BB10 Z10 - what is it they say about fool me three times...

[Fuzzballz]

Yeah because of all the CEOs that have been put in jail recently. Like, what, 2 in the past decade?

[poppy10]

Just last month the WSJ was reporting on Blackberry considering spinning off BBM into a separate company. With Fairfax taking over, this would be an easy cash-grab - sell off BBM and make a ton of profit. Maybe that's why they cancelled the launch.

[BB_Bmore]

All blackberry apps are indeed gone from Google play. Maybe this is a sign that BBM is getting closer to launch?

Sent from my HTC One running PlayBook 3.0

[pkcable]

yet nothing still posted officially. Forum post or not, how do we even know that was the real deal. Could be anyone saying he is Alex

It's the real Alex. He and Alec Saunders are authorized to speak officially here.....

http://forums.crackberry.com/site-ne...thread-569781/ (Alec Saunders was added AFTER this thread)


So now we have our official answer, this rumor is completely false!!!!!!

http://forums.crackberry.com/news-ru...ml#post9222850