BlackBerry’s BBM™ will soon come pre-installed on a variety of Android™-based smartphones from TECNO and other leading OEMs across Africa, India, Indonesia, Latin America and the Middle East.
Some of the OEM that will be preinstalling BBM in these partnership will include Be, Brighstar, Celkon, EVERCROSS, IMO, Micromax, Mito, Snexian, Spice, our very own TECNO, TiPhone and Zen, BlackBerry has said in a press release.
BBM™ is still going to be available in the Google Play Store for download.
The reason why BBM™ has gone into this partnership is they see mobile messaging as top priority by mobile phone users from emerging markets.
TECNO has been hard on the ground here in Nigeria releasing one hit after the other. After the Tecno Phantom A, we’ve also had A+, A2 and now the A3. Jason Liu, Marketing Director of TECNO GROUP has this to say; “We are pleased to announce that we’re working with BBM™ team at BlackBerry to install BBM™ on the Android Smartphones we bring to the market.
This will be a win-win for the OEMs and BlackBerry. BBM™ is one of the reasons BlackBerry phones are popular with smartphone users in the countries listed above—emerging countries. I know people who swear by BBM on their BlackBerry and carry multiple phones, where BlackBerry is their second phones so that they can have access to BBM™.
A few smartphone users who abandoned BBM™ and moved to iOS and Android platform were eager to have BBM™ available to them and even caused some hick up when an unauthorized BBM for Android was downloaded my many. This resulted in BlackBerry pushing back on the release date.
BlackBerry’s BBM crossed the 20 millionth mark in the first week. This move to preinstall the app is not only going to bring back some of the former users of BBM™, but will make some new activations possible.
Time is going reveal how this is going to save BlackBerry that has failed to get a buyer. BlackBerry also recently fired its CEO and a host of other top executives with the aim of repositioning the brand after receiving some new funds from Fairfax financial and a host of other investors.
