BlackBerry: No Commitments to BBM on the Desktop

BlackBerry showed off the ability to access and use BlackBerry Messenger using desktop machines on Thursday at the end of the keynote speech to kick off BlackBerry Jam Asia in Hong Kong. The soon to be cross-platform mobile messaging app seems to finally have been extended to the desktop. But has it? The world thinks that BlackBerry will soon release a BBM app for desktop computers. That's not the case at all.

While VP Developer Relations Alec Saunders and VP of Handheld Application Platforms and Tools Christopher Smith demoed BackBerry Messenger on the desktop by tethering a BlackBerry 10 device to a Windows computer over Wi-Fi, they mentioned that it will also support Macs running OS X and USB tethering is also supported.

Some of the major messaging apps such as Skype, Viber, Line, and KakaoTalk have desktop apps that allow people to use their services directly from desktop or notebook computers, but apparently BlackBerry decided to do it differently. Instead of showing a full fledged desktop app with direct access to the BlackBerry network, what they were showing was the use of BlackBerry Link which works only by tethering a BlackBerry 10 device to, in this case, a desktop computer.

We caught up with Smith after the presentation to clarify a few things regarding this capability and apparently it's more than simply accessing BBM through a separate computer. The demo was not about bringing Messenger to the desktop.

"We haven't made any commitments to BBM on the desktop", Smith said. "What we were showing was a really a concept. The way we were delivering the concept was we're taking advantage of the secure connectivity on the device and the same connectivity we support on the desktop with BlackBerry Link to show how you can take it and get the same kind of UI. It's using the same connection technology. We're not thinking of this as a product and an extension of BlackBerry Link".

In other words, BBM on desktop was actually a showcase of what is possible using BlackBerry Link. Smith said that the demo could have been about using SMS on the desktop over bluetooth, but since it's BlackBerry and the devices were already on Wi-Fi anyway, it was only natural to show Messenger and use Wi-Fi as the connecting technology.

Essentially, it was not a demo of a BBM app running on the desktop computer but it was to show how you can "dock" a BlackBerry 10 device to another platform to use its capabilities, features, and services, as well as the secure connection provided by BlackBerry, on that other device. Which is actually pretty useful in itself but not what people thought they heard.