BlackBerry CEO John Chen took to the stage at CES 2015 to talk a little about the company’s plans for the next year.
One of his major goals is still to monetize BBM. Last year, Chen said he hoped BBM would generate $100 million for the company’s 2014 fiscal year. That’s still the plan and Chen talked a in a little more detail today about just how the company plans to make money from its messaging service.
BlackBerry plans to continue to leverage BBM as an ad platform, connecting businesses and brands with BBM users. The company will also embrace payments, enabling social commerce through payment and merchant capabilities.
Those who are sick of seeing stickers will be disappointed to know that BlackBerry will be making an even bigger push in the BBM virtual store, with more sticker packs, apps, and free items to drive user engagement.
Most importantly of all, BlackBerry plans to introduce a subscription bundle that will offer a vanity BBM pin and no ads for a subscription fee. There is now word on how the vanity pin will work and the only word on when this subscription will be available is “sometime this year”.
