Bad news for anyone that's been waiting for the rumors of RIM's BlackBerry Messenger service making is way to Android and iOS to come to fruition, as any progress that plans to license BBM out has reportedly been halted. According to the Wall Street Journal, RIM executives had cooked up a project dubbed "SMS 2.0" that would see BBM licensed out for use on non-BlackBerry devices, including the iPhone and Android phones, and the company even went so far as to acquire a messaging firm named LiveProfile as part of its strategy. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins apparently axed the company's BBM licensing plans, though, with sources claiming that Heins thought that RIM shouldn't be taking part in any licensing deals.
BlackBerry Messenger has long been one of the big attractions to RIM's smartphones, and we've been hearing for some time now that the service may be headed to competing platforms. Former RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie was even reportedly backing the plans to license services like BBM, but his plans are said to have been killed by RIM's board, which instead wanted to focus on BlackBerry 10. It'd definitely be interesting to see BBM appear on non-BlackBerry devices, but considering how RIM's share of the smartphone market has taken a bit of a hit as of late, it's probably not a bad idea for the Waterloo-based firm to give as much attention to BlackBerry 10 as possible. How many of you would use BBM if it came to iOS and Android?
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