Remember BBM? The other, other, other, other messaging app that most people (outside of Indonesia where Blackberry is apparently still huge) installed out of curiosity then fairly promptly un-installed and haven’t looked at since?
Blackberry has announced today that they’ll soon be incorporating Android Wear support into their Android app. The app will have a fair bit of functionality too, with Blackberry advising :
BBM for Android Wear will enable BBM users to seamlessly:
Receive alerts on the watch when new BBM messages come in, see the sender and discreetly preview messages.
Read BBM messages in their entirety, navigate among messages and dismiss notifications with a simple swipe.
Respond to messages hands-free with Google Now or choose from pre-defined messages to quickly send a response.
Accept BBM invites from the watch without the need to access their smartphone.
In the press release, Senior Vice President of BBM Engineering and Product Management Herman Li said BlackBerry is committed to listening to our customers and integrating new features and partners to improve the BBM Chat experience, the integration of BBM to support wearable technology is just one way we’re expanding the capabilities of our portfolio and delivering exciting options for customers to easily access BlackBerry’s cross-platform technologies.
It’s a big step forward for BBM but with Hangouts, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, ICQ, Skype, Yammer and Twitter (to name only a few of the available messaging platforms) already out there with significant footprint it’s going to be difficult for BBM to gain new market share instead needing to keep their existing users happy with the product to avoid losing them to a competing product.
If you use BBM regularly, share your use case with us – we’re curious…
