Ever since WhatsApp’s announced acquisition by Facebook, the internet has been in a seemingly unending uproar over which calling and messaging application will be the next to get snatched up.
In addition to rumors of a possible LINE acquisition that we’re looking into, it turns out that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) could be sold off as well, according to reports.
“anything to help our shareholders I need to take a very serious look at”
“Running a public company, anything to help our shareholders I need to take a very serious look at,” Chen said in an interview today with Bloomberg Television at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “Today I think we need to build up that base and build up the innovation model.”
BlackBerry has added about 25 million BBM users since May to reach 85 million this month according to the company, most of which occurred after the launch of the application on iOS and Android. The company is also ready to launch BBM on Windows Phone. Even so, it would take about 11 years at its current growth rate to rival numbers that WhatsApp has now.
While Chen says the potential for such an acquisition could be “huge” for BlackBerry, there are a lot of potential hurtles ahead, not to mention continually growing competition. Still, with a version of the BBM application on every mobile operating system and the right amount of user engagement to boot, anything can happen.