BlackBerry has recently launched its Z10 smartphone
in India for Rs. 43,
990. The Canadian smartphone is facing a lot of flak due to the
steep price for their flagship device.
However, if the company does
want to command a premium for Z10 (Review) , it will have to ensure that it offers
a good app eco-system to its patrons. At the time of launch, BlackBerry
had announced that it has 70,000 apps. However, most of these apps were
ported from other leading platforms.
A few days ago, there were
reports that Instagram will not be offering a native app for the
BlackBerry 10 (Review) smartphones. The popular messaging application WhatsApp,
on the other hand, is eager to join the BlackBerry 10 brigade. Neeraj
Arora from WhatsApp has tweeted that the app will be making its way to
the BlackBerry 10 smartphones by March 2013.
Even at the time of
BlackBerry 10 launch, WhatsApp had indicated that they will be soon
launching a native app for this brand new operating system and now the
company seems to be living up to its promise.
It's is noteworthy,
that WhatsApp is an alternative to BlackBerry's most popular BlackBerry
Messenger (BBM) App. BBM as an app can only work between BlackBerry
devices irrespective of which version of operating system they are
running on. Prior to BlackBerry 10 was launched, the consumers had to
subscribe to a BlackBerry plan from their respective operators to use
BBM. In the new operating system, BBM will work on Wi-Fi as well.
WhatsApp
is a popular cross platform application, which had set a record of
exchanging 10 billion total messages in a single day in August 2012.
This record consisted of 4 billion inbound messages and 6 billion
outbound messages. This app is now also available for the dual-SIM Asha
phones. As per both Nokia and WhatsApp, the app for S40 platform is
deeply integrated with operating system.
BlackBerry Z10: In pictures