BlackBerry promotes BBM in response to iMessage’s spam issues

BlackBerry is taking advantage of reports of iMessage’s vulnerability to spam messages to tout its BlackBerry Messenger app. In a blog post, the company highlights a report from earlier this week that said iMessage users see quite a bit of spam, with accounts run by spammers responsible for more than 30 percent of all spam messages on mobile devices. BlackBerry suggests that iMessage users switch to BBM to avoid spam and lists five reasons why BBM is superior to iMessage. According to the company, BBM is safer primarily because it does not utilize a phone number or email address and it only accepts messages from contacts. BlackBerry also uses its list to highlight BBM’s encryption that protects messages from “spying or hacking,” its ability to block contacts, and its cross-platform availability. Despite all of BBM’s apparent perks, BlackBerry has had trouble convincing users to adopt the app due to competition from iMessage and other messaging apps like WhatsApp, Kik,WeChat, and more. In late 2013, BlackBerry users on Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry phones sent and received approximately 10 billion messages per day, while WhatsAppprocessed upwards 50 billion messages per day.