BlackBerry is considering spinning off its BlackBerry Messenger service to form a standalone company.
It may not come as a surprise after one of the oldest and well-known mobile making companies, BlackBerry Limited, announced recently that it is considering all options for the company including selling its business to another firm. A latest report from the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, claims that the Canadian company is planning to spin off its BlackBerry Messenger service into a separate unit ahead of plans to sell the company.
"Many of these planned offerings have been in progress internally for years," the WSJ report read. "A working cross-platform BBM service had been operable and ready to launch as far back as three years ago, according to people close to the company, before executives decided not to proceed. A desktop version of BBM had also been running internally years ago, according to this person, but executives chose not to bring that offering to the public either."
If the plan of forming a separate unit for its BBM service gets a green light, then the company will be named, BBM Inc. BBM will eventually expand to other platforms in competition with the famous Whatsapp mobile messaging application.
Although BlackBerry may not have been dominant in the competitive smartphone market, its BBM has about 60 million users. Blackberry launched the latest version of its Messenger in March, which allows free calls over Wi-Fi and a new range of emotions. In December last year, BBM was integrated with voice chat via its Voice Call feature.
