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RIM CEO on the future of BBM: “Think about transacting money”


BlackBerry 10, RIM’s new “mobile computing platform of the future,” is on track to be launched sometime during Q1 2013. There’s been a tremendous amount of hype on the new OS and over the past number of weeks RIM has been busy showing of various features, such as peek, it’s flow, various apps, and the camera features – all very impressive and a big change from what current BlackBerry users are experiencing today.

One of the iconic RIM features is BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Now considered a word by the Official Collins English Dictionary, BBM is used by over 60 million people worldwide. Within BlackBerry 10 RIM is staying true to it’s fundamentals, but adding a bunch of new emoticons, predictive keyboard interactions, plus will eventually welcome “BBM Video” to the mix.

There also seems to be future plans to make BBM an e-commerce play. According to a report in the Jakarta Post, Thorsten Heins, RIM’s CEO, stated that BBM is “a very strong platform not just for communication, but also to make it a strong platform for [e-commerce]… Think about transacting money. This is one element in which you could have a huge BBM population in Indonesia transferring money from one partner to another.” Heins also noted that BBM in BB10 will have “enhanced communication activities” that are beyond “just texting”. The report clearly focussed on the Indonesian market and didn’t say anything about coming to other countries, but would make sense for it to be launched in North America and Europe.

On the BB10 release dates, Heins also commented that we’d see a release of the all touch device in Q1, then “probably see within an eight-week time space, a full touch device and a QWERTY-touch device.”

RIM currently has over 80 million BlackBerry subscribers around the world.

Source: JakartaPost
Via: BerryReview

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