The screens are bigger, the apps are better, so why would you want a Blackberry?” said 17-year-old London student Freya Bowen.ĬCS Insight’s Wood, however, said BBM could be one of BlackBerry’s most valuable assets if it can keep the loyalty of its remaining customers and add more on other platforms. iPhones are more reliable and you usually get unlimited texts with an iPhone contract. It held 35 percent of the British market for 16-24 year olds early in 2012, according to Ofcom data, beating Apple and Android, but fell to 17 percent a year later while Apple and Android had 40 percent and 35 percent respectively.įacing the loss of a key demographic, BlackBerry announced it would make BBM available for Android and iPhone, but, in another stumble, the roll out was paused on Saturday after an unreleased version of the BBM for Android app was posted online. WhatsApp did not comment on its future strategy.īlackBerry established itself by being seen in the hands of lawyers, bankers and politicians and became the smartphone of choice for British teenagers and young adults. That compares with BBM’s 10 billion messages a day. The grandfather of the group, WhatsApp, created by two ex-Yahoo engineers in 2009, has more than 300 million users and processes 31 billion messages a day, a spokeswoman told Reuters, making it bigger than Twitter in terms of active users.
The three others are WeChat in China, developed by Internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd and promoted by Argentine footballer Lionel Messi South Korea’s KakaoTalk, run by privately-held Kakao Corp and Japan-based Line, a unit of Naver Corp of South Korea. U.S.-based WhatsApp and Canada’s Kik Interactive are two of five major “cross-platform” messaging services that have built up big followings and which are also being tipped as the next big takeover targets for the likes of Facebook and Yahoo. You can use these on any device even if you can’t afford an iPhone,” said 14-year-old Euan McPhillips, a schoolboy from Gerrards Cross, just north of London. “I use WhatsApp and Kik with all my friends and family. The phone that once so dominated the UK youth market that its messaging service BBM was even blamed for helping to connect young rioters who fought police and wrecked shops in London and other cities in 2011, has now lost its cool.īlackBerry has been usurped by Apple and Android-run phones, and BBM has been eclipsed by the emergence of free messaging apps that work across a range of devices. The company logo is see at the Blackberry campus in Waterloo, September 23, 2013.
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