Research In Motion has been taking a beating over the past year as it has seen share prices weaken and market share drop. The one aspect of the RIM business that has stood the test of competition is the Canadian firm’s ever popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service which is now a significant part of the company’s vision for the future. 60 million BBM users around the world rely on the service to communicate securely with others. The ability to see if someone has read your message on BBM is a feature that sets it apart from the competition and RIM wants to build on that. The company has already given BBM the ability to share music and pretty soon it will also have BBM Voice. The new service lets users talk to their BBM contact through Wi-Fi, a potentially game changing service . Reports also indicate that the upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS will also have a BBM Video Chat feature.
In October of 2012, CEO Thorsten Heins, talked about their flagship service and commented on the direction BBM will be taking by saying that it is “a very strong platform not just for communication, but also to make it a strong platform for [e-commerce]… Think about transacting money.”
RIM is now making that vision come true in Indonesia, which is a developing market and significant part of RIM plans for recovery and expansion overseas. RIM’s Managing Director of South Asia operations, Hastings Singh, said, “Indonesia is very important for RIM… It’s a huge market for us – and it is a market that has grown significantly over the last few years… So we are offering a new innovation – BBM Money which will be launched in Indonesia – first in the world – shortly. It is a peer-to-peer transfer service that anyone with a BlackBerry phone can use to transfer funds to someone else with a BlackBerry phone.”
RIM has developed a reputation for providing secure communication and the new money service should build on that. The company has developed a new way to service its client and take advantage of its already existing infrastructure. The move should not harm RIM and may even help it keep market share in the growing Indonesian marketplace.
Source: MobileSyrup