‘Over 500,000 new users on Blackberry messenger monthly’ – Talbot

Matthew Talbot is the Senior Vice President – Emerging Solutions at BlackBerry, In this exclusive interview with JUMOKE AKIYODE, Talbot talks about BBM’s migration from pure messaging to eco-system leveraging messaging that brings together chat, social and commerce, growth and the future for Blackberry in Nigeria. Excerpts:

What is the reason for the strategic move to feature the BBM in Android and iOS devices rather than it being specific to BlackBerry phones.

When we released BBM for download to Android and iOS users back in November 2013, we were confident in its potential to become an independent messaging platform. By providing BBM cross platform, we gave Android and iOS users the opportunity to experience all the features the messaging platform offers, including privacy, controls and immediacy. In July 2015, we celebrated BBM’s 10th birthday. In 10 years, what started as a simple PIN-to-PIN, text-only, BlackBerry smartphone instant messaging solution has become a thriving, cross-platform ecosystem bringing together chat, social and commerce. Over the years, there has been tremendous growth and increased popularity and we have seen over 315 million new registrations since opening up BBM to Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

Would you say that there is currently a growth or decline in the demand for BlackBerry phones since the distinguishing (BBM) feature is now available in other devices?

Since the beginning, customers love BBM for its privacy, controls and immediacy with Delivered and Read statuses, and message-in-progress notices. And this was clearly part of BlackBerry success on the consumer side.The substantial change since its launch in 2005 is that we are now focused on making BBM the most connected, social platform for consumers. We know that BBM users value privacy and security. We know that messaging apps are the new way people keep in touch — in the office, across town, and around the world. We envision a future where BBM is the gateway to your world, where you interact with your friends, family, favorite brands, shopping outlets, local merchants, and more. The latest release of BBM brings a set of great new services that provide more privacy options and more control over what you send from your phone. That’s exactly in keeping with our history, our vision, and our strategy.BBM isn’t just a simple messaging app – it’s an eco-system bringing together chat, social and commerce.

How has the popularity of WhatsApp affected BBM?

We believe consumers and businesses will use multiple chat applications, depending on their different networks and the market is certainly large enough for this. BBM has migrated away from being a pure messaging to now an eco-system leveraging messaging, but bringing together chat, social and commerce.  That’s why our engagement with the user continues to grow and72% of our monthly active users (MAU) are using BBM on a daily basis. That’s the highest number I’ve seen among social apps — topping both WhatsApp and Facebook.

In addition while some of the other messaging apps treat privacy like a nice-to-have, at BlackBerry, privacy is in our DNA and BBM users benefit from that heritage. BBM is encrypted by default and BBM Protected offers enterprise customers an enhanced security model that protects corporate data in-transit by adding an additional layer of encryption to BBM.

Indeed, our proven track record in privacy and security makes BBM a perfect match for mobile commerce and mobile financial services, and hence why we have brought together our BBM Payment options through our-  partnership with Interswitch Ltd, enabling Nigerians transfer money or airtime within BBM, as simply as they transfer photos or files.

What are the future plans for BlackBerry in Nigeria and Africa as a whole?

We have over 22 million registered customers in Africa, so it continues to be a strong market for us. Nigeria and South Africa are our two top markets in Africa and we continue to see strength in our user base across Android, iOS, BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS. On iOS and Android, we see over half a million new users install BBM every single month. That growth rate continues to accelerate as network effects take root in several markets across the continent.

The advertising markets in South Africa and Nigeria represent two of our biggest global opportunities. Big-name brands such as KFC, Levi’s, Datsun, First National Bank and Lenovo move onto the platform each week. We currently have onboard 100’s of advertiser campaigns each month across this vibrant and exciting market.

Here in Nigeria, we’re establishing BBM as a leading messaging platform for mobile commerce.  In addition to the work we are doing with Interswitch to enable BBM users to send money to each other, we will be able extending this capability to other BBM stakeholders.  For instance, BBM users will be able to securely and conveniently send money to an e-commerce retailer that has sent them a BBM Ad.  Put simply, BBM will become a marketplace for commerce in Nigeria.