Blackberry May Consider Adding VoIP Service

Blackberry has had nothing but problems breaking back into the smartphone market. The company simply hasn’t been able to compete with the likes of Android and iOS. Some firms would tuck their tails between their legs and surrender, but if recent rumors can be believed, it appears that Blackberry might take a new fight to a new market. Industry insiders are claiming the Canadian tech company is looking to launch a consumer driven VoIP service like Microsoft’s Skype.

During a recent media briefing, the senior director of BBM business development, David Proulx, admitted that the company is going to start offering up BBM Voice for free. During that acknowledgement, he also wouldn’t strictly rule out the idea of Blackberry doing one better and offering up a Skype-like VoIP feature.

As with most issues when it comes to the media, Proulx not killing the rumors appears to be getting taken as a tacit admission that the service is coming down the pike. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Blackberry would at least look at this situation and decide they might want to launch something that is WebRTC or VoIP based as an alternative to Skype.

More businesses are leaning on services like Skype in order to do their business across the world. Skype might be one service that is well recognized for these kinds of actions, but it is really only dominating that market because there aren’t a whole lot of competitors going head to head with the tech. If Blackberry can launch something that gives Skype a run for its money, there’s a chance it could get a second life in the business tech world.

Proulx added that the ultimate goal for Blackberry is to find a number of different ways to make BBM profitable and adding a Skype function could certainly fall into that category. Now that the application is available on other devices, it will be easier to add usage and services to the basic platform.

Proulx added that the firm is going with a multi-pronged approach so that it can speed up the process, or slow it down depending on the commercial success and what is required.

Edited by Alisen Downey