Skype's GroupMe Purchase Threatens BlackBerry
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Today Skype announced its plans to acquire group messaging service GroupMe, but has yet to reveal any of the financial details.

The WSJ reports the acquisition will strengthen Skype’s mobile telephony capabilities, which is a market experiencing strong and rapid growth.

“Skype and GroupMe have a shared vision of creating applications and experiences that are the daily communications choice for a billion people,” said Skype’s CEO Tony Bates.

“The GroupMe team has created an incredibly sticky group messaging experience that works across mobile devices and platforms, making this a perfect addition to the voice, video and text products in the Skype family.”

Founded in 2010, GroupMe allows people to communicate in private group messages through their mobile phones.

Skype is not the only company veering towards the mobile platform, with Facebook and Google also rolling out new services that facilitate group messaging. There’s also speculation that Apple will join these ranks with the feature being native to the next generation iPhone.

At one stage group messaging was dominated by BlackBerry’s Messenger service, which gave the Canadian company a competitive edge. But with technological progression facilitating the widespread availability of more services, BlackBerry is in dire need of another X factor.

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