BlackBerry has announced yesterday a bundling agreement with LG Electronics, under which its popular messaging for cross- platform BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) will soon be coming pre-installed on LG Electronics smartphones. The company has also announced that the first LG smartphone to come pre-installed with BBM, would be LG G Pro Lite. However, BlackBerry has not revealed which other LG models of smartphones would come preloaded with BBM.
BBM is very popular messaging app of BlackBerry, which lets users exchange texts, photos and voice notes with friends and others, as well as update their profile and status with ease. Up to 30 people can connect as a BBM Group to chat and share photos, calendars and other files or documents. Every BBM user is alloted a unique PIN tied to their BlackBerry ID that helps maintains their privacy. For adding friends, users are required to share their PIN with friends via SMS, email and social networks. Users are not required to give out their phone number or email address to begin chatting with a new or casual contact.
Commenting on this announcement, Mr. Kevin Shin, Vice President of Marketing for Asia, the Middle East and CIS countries of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, said, “BBM is widely used throughout the Middle East, Africa and Indonesia where smartphone users tend to engage heavily in social networking. The LG G Pro Lite offers an optimized BBM experience with its large, high quality display and embedded Stylus Pen.”
“People across the globe are using BBM to connect with each other and the enthusiasm has been phenomenal,” said Andrew Bocking, Executive Vice President for BBM at BlackBerry. “We’re extremely pleased that LG Electronics will help bring their customers a more seamless experience with BBM by preloading the app, starting with the G Pro Lite in key markets.”
In India, Micromax was the first company to pre-install BBM on its Canvas range of smartphones.
BlackBerry’s BBM is so popular worldwide that the moment they decided to offer it for free on Android and iOS paltforms, there was 20 million downloads in one week on the combined platforms.
According to BlackBerry, the BBM experience will continue to evolve for Android and iPhone users in the coming months, with updates that will include support for BBM Channels, a new service that connects BBM users to communities of shared interests in a very engaging and intimate manner, as well as support for BBM Voice calling and BBM Video calling.
