Smartphone maker BlackBerry is to port its popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) tool to Android and iOS. It will be available on all three platforms by the summer, claims the company, and crucially will be free.
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Users currently pay their service provider £5 per month for the privilege of using the instant messaging service, which is losing out to the free messaging app, WhatsApp.
That development is the latest in a slew of announcements made today at the BlackBerry Live conference in Orlando, Florida.
"We're committed to making the 'BBM experience' on other platforms as fully featured as we can," CEO Thorsten Heins said in a keynote. He continued: "We'll start with messaging and groups, but we'll add voice and 'screen share' later on."
Heins claimed that Apple and Google had "asked us for years" to port BBM to their respective platforms. He added that he expected the BlackBerry 10 platform to "become an independent messaging solution".
The company has also unveiled a BlackBerry Q5 keyboarded smartphone, following on from last month's Q10 launch. The Q5, though, is a lower priced device aimed at emerging markets - the Q10 costs an eye-watering £579.99.
Version 10.1 of its BlackBerry 10 operating system was also unveiled, promising improved battery life for the flagship z10 smartphone, and users will be able to download and run Skype for voice-over-IP communications.
The lack of a Skype app had been considered a serious gap in the BlackBerry app store, especially as BlackBerry faces intensifying competition from Microsoft, Skpe's owner.
BlackBerry now claims to have more than 120,000 apps in its app store, although an estimated 20 per cent of them are Android ports making use of BlackBerry 10's compatibility with Android up to version 2.3.
While the Android ports run just fine, most do not utilise BB10′s core services making them feel and respond unlike native BB10 apps.
Microsoft has targeted BlackBerry, especially in view of its enterprise presence, in a bid to drive up adoption levels of its Windows Phone 8 smartphone operating system. While the Android ports run okay, they are based on an out-of-date version of Android and are not optimised for the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
As a result, they feel different from apps that have been built natively in BlackBerry 10.
While BlackBerry has unveiled a number of long-awaited devices based on a more touch-friendly (and user friendly) operating system, it still has to convince key opinion formers that it can successfully turn itself around, following two years of market share losses to Android and Apple.
In a research note for clients published on Monday, Amitbah Passi, an analyst with investment bank UBS, commented: "We have seen little from BlackBerry to inspire confidence in a turnaround in a hyper-competitive industry and formidable competitors including Samsung, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Huawei, among others, with significantly more resources."
