The lawsuit BlackBerry Ltd. made against another company that develops instant messaging applications has finally been settled. In November 2010, BlackBerry sued this company, Kik Interactive, because it's app was BBM (BlackBerry Messaging)-inspired. Actually, Kik was started by one of BlackBerry's former co-op students, Ted Livingston, who created this app when BlackBerry refused to allow BBM to be available on other smartphones like Apple and Android. According to Mr. Livingston, they were afraid people would stop buying BlackBerrys because consumers usually bought them specifically to use BBM. When Kik launched in the fall of 2010, it was a huge success, with one million users in the first fifteen days, and eventually became even more popular than BBM. Since then, after seeing the success of Kik, Blackberry is about to lauch BBM for Android and Apple, but the profits they will now make are not close to what they could have made if they had released it sooner and went cross-platform. Nowadays, instant messaging apps, like BBM, Kik and WhatsApp, are "killer apps", according to Mr. Livingston, and have had a huge amount of financing and investments (about twelve million dollars).
Though this article was written to explain the background of BlackBerry's lawsuit and how it's now settled, it also is important in other ways because it gives us an introduction to the instant messaging app industry. A conclusion we can draw from this is that availability is the key. BlackBerry lost a great opportunity when they refused to let BBM go cross-platform, while Kik did and made a huge profit and became very popular. It's amazing to think of how many instant messaging apps are out there, but also how similar they all are. WhatsApp is basically like texting and Facebook messaging, and I sometimes have trouble imagining why someone feels the need to create a new, and yet very similar, way of communicating. No wonder BlackBerry was so reluctant, because it's dog-eat-dog world where social media and technology is concerned. Things are moving ahead so quickly, and fashions and fads go in and out in an instant. Where that company went wrong was to avoid moving with the times, and now they will suffer a little for it. However, the uniqueness of instant messaging lies in the "communities" it forms; you have to buy an app to use it, and why would you buy it? Because your friend did. This article is relevant in our lives today because it shows us the power we as consumers have, but also how instant messaging drives us, and how ruthless companies can be (a student breaking away from a company) to try and control that part of our lives.
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/mobile/blackberry-kik-interactive-settle-lawsuit-over-instant-messaging-app/article14738696/
Money, money, money. All people care about is money. Money and Power. It just all depends who has that. And in this case, it would be Blackberry. How terrible.
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