<p>BlackBerry Banking Heavier on BBMBlackBerry may have found a valuable niche to fill with an enhanced multiplatform offering--particularly if they can tie in the desktop IM and presence offerings.</p><p>BlackBerry may have found a valuable niche to fill with an enhanced multiplatform offering--particularly if they can tie in the desktop IM and presence offerings.</p><p>An article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that beleaguered smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry is considering spinning off its profitable BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service or positioning it as a separate subsidiary. This is in line with the announcement a few weeks back that the company's Board of Directors would be looking at "strategic alternatives" for the company going forward. The company has already confirmed its intention to support iOS and Android devices on the BBM service later this year.</p><p>As BlackBerry's footprint has shrunk, the number of BBM users has shrunk with it. At its inception, BBM was a pioneering service that got BlackBerry users off traditional SMS messaging with delivery confirmations, group chat, embedded images, and lots of other cool things--all of which Apple incorporated into its iMessenger. Of course the other thing the two services had in common was the fact they were "closed systems", BBM for BlackBerry users and iMessenger for iOS users.</p><p><a href="http://www.nojitter.com/post/240160576/blackberry-banking-heavier-on-bbm">Keep reading...</a></p>