Thats Only Possible..in Dreams! or if Nokia Takes Over BB!!! hehehehe! that too in Dreams!

I need to see this magical BB Messenger. It must be light years ahead of integrated IM Chat in N900 for people to request it.

Well that assumes we have control over what others are doing. Take my situation for example. I am Nigerian but live in the UK. 99% of my family are in Nigeria and like 90% of my friends. In Nigeria every man, woman and dog is using blackberry because of blackberry messanger. Reason being it is cheapest way to communicate. In Nigeria there are no free call packages and call costs are incredibly high. Everyone buys blackberry so they can get around the high call costs.

I was using my N900 and permanently logged on to skype, yahoo messanger, msn and gtalk. However, I hardly used to see anyone online. Everyone was on blackberry messanger and had stopped logging on to those services. One or two still bothered to log on to msn from their blackberries. In the end I had no choice. If I wanted to chat with my friends an family I just had to get a blackberry. All the million chat engines on the N900 meant nothing as I could not chat with the people I wanted to on any of them.

Now I have to carry two devices around. One for chatting and one for everything else. Oh how I wish Nokia had been the one that came up with this incredible chat. Funny thing is the whole of Nigeria was using Nokias before they switched to blackberry just for messanger. Huge missed opportunity there by Nokia.

I hate my blackberry though. Super ugly and super boring device. Now if some magician could make my blackberry chat appear on my N900 so I could dump the blackberry in a pit where it belongs I would be soooo happy.

That is the funny thing. The interface is sooo bad. It is a nightmare of highest proportions compared to IM Chat on N900. I can't even begin to describe how bad the interface is. However, that does not matter. We on this site always attack iphone users because of how pretty everything is and it is style over substance. Well I would describe it as us N900 users being in the reverse situation here.

1. As bad as the interface is it does not matter because so many are using blackberry messanger. As I mentioned above that is what all my friends and family use. That the interface is terrible compared to N900 chat does not matter. I can reach very very few people on the N900 chat engines.

2. It is so easy to share things on blackberry chat. Till today there is no file sharing on N900 other than jabber accounts. With blackberry messanger my wife can be on the other side of the world and I am chatting with her. I select send voice note, click record, click stop, send. My son could be with my wife and she clicks send picture, takes picture of my son and sends it to me in less than five seconds. You can even send video files although they can't be too long.

3. Setting up chat groups is as easy as ABC. You can have a group with all your closest friends and chat away. You can have a chat group with friends you argue football with. You can have work group.

As bad as the interface is I would rather have only blackberry messanger on my N900 than all the built in chats on the N900 times a million.

Group Chat sounds good. Sounds like something N900 should have.

You can download an app to send files over IM conversations but yes a native built in solution is probably better.

Though I would say comparing N900 to Apple, and BB to Nokia in this area is a bit over the top. Nokia's chat implementation is quite well done. Not having to install Skype, Gchat, yahoo etc and being able to log into all your IM accounts with 3 clicks is superb (though not perfect).

MTN Nigeria has 40 million "subscribers", and 65 000 of those are Blackberry subscribers. So, I don't think even every man has a blackberry. I guess next someone is going to say everyone has an iPhone too. Even though most have more than one phone, I haven't seen anyone with both Blackberry and iPhone.

Nokia had ovi chat before Blackberry was popular in Africa.

Funny thing is, everyone in Nigeria uses yahoo for free mail accounts. What an opportunity missed by Google ....

IMHO, the biggest factor is that Blackberry *requires* IP access, so providers have to supply IP access to blackberry users. If all Nokia phones which supported chat over GPRS or 3G or so were actually provided with such access by default, then Nigerians would be using Ovi chat.

The figures you have quoted is sort of how people say Nokia is in trouble and people point to symbian sales and say how all is perfect in Nokia world when the issue is the profit margins on those cheap symbian phones is very low whilst it is in the high end where the big profit is. But that is a discussion for another day.

Obviously when I said every man, woman and dog has a blackberry it was an exaggeration and an expression of how popular blackberry is. Clearly dogs cannot have blackberrys. Thought that would give it away. It is the same as the statement every Tom, Dick and Harry. Does not mean anyone has gone around the world checking whether something is in common with every single Tom, Dick and Harry.

My mum's driver, cleaner and security guard have phones. Every man on the street has a phone now. Of course they are not going to get blackberrys for over £100. They are carrying £10 Nokias, LGs, etc.

However, the only people in Nigeria in my N900 address book who do not have blackberrys are my mum, aunties and uncles. My mum does not even know how to send a text message, let alone having a need for blackberry. Every single one of my friends in Nigeria has a blackberry and every single one of my younger relatives. I do not know a single person in the under 20 to 35 age group in Nigeria that does not have a blackberry. If I wanted to be able to chat with people in Nigeria I had absolutely no choice but to get a blackberry.

As for your yahoo point I assume you mean they all have yahoo accounts right? That may be but if you do not have access to yahoo on your mobile device and actually log in to it it is irrelevant if they all have it. I still can't reach them on it.

I have in the last 12 years had nothing other than Nokia. And before the N900 I had never even heard of ovi chat. And after owning the N900 for close to a year I still do not know a single person on ovi chat. So surely Nokia is doing something wrong there.

Your last point is only thing I agree with. When I went to Nigeria last year on holiday I tried to get internet bundles to use my N900 during my time there. Went to every single mobile phone network company and they only had bundles with blackberry. I did not know why that was the case but must be the reason you have given. I just got back last month though and notice that with the arival of the ipad Glo now has 3G bundles and I suspect the other providers will soon join them.

Bear in mind another advantage blackberry has over maemo 5, android, ios. The battery life on blackberry is pretty amazing. There is hardly ever electricity in Nigeria so if you have a battery hog like N900 and have to log in to a chat engine on it you may find yourself with a dead phone very often. And I don't think most people would want to carry around a spare battery.