Andrew Bocking, executive vice-president of BBM for BlackBerry, has revealed in an interview with CBC News of Canada that the BBM will remain a free service and the company has other ideas to monetize it.
The report further suggested that the Canadian firm will be soon introducing a new social networking feature called BBM Channels, which is currently in beta. As per the report, the BBM Channel feature would enable BBM users to share content with others and in addition would allow the company to alter and target ads towards targeted audience.
Bocking also revealed in the interview that BlackBerry will be launching voice and video chat features to BBM for Android and iOS in coming months.
Earlier this month, BlackBerry resumed the BBM rollout to Android and iOS users after more than a month's delay. The app was reportedly downloaded over 10 million times by Android and iPhone users, one of the best single-day openings for a mobile app to date.
The BBM app allows users to exchange texts, voice notes and pictures with friends and others. It also offers group chat. Users need to sign-in with a BlackBerry ID following which a PIN is allocated to them, in a manner similar to BlackBerry Messenger on BlackBerry. Users can then add friends by sharing their PIN with friends via SMS, email and social networks in addition to QR codes.
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