iOS 5’s iMessage Drove RIM’s Stock Down?

When iMessage was announced as one of the new features in iOS 5 the first thing that popped into many minds was probably RIM’s BBM service, the Blackberry to Blackberry messaging app that made Blackberry devices so popular and unique. iMessage essentially does the very same thing, except this time it’s iOS to iOS and while we knew that this would more or less make Blackberry devices less unique, who would have thought it would be bad enough to drive RIM’s stocks down?

According to TechRadar:

iMessage announced by Apple on Monday will challenge RIM’s highly popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant chat service which has given the Canadian company an edge over its rivals. The Apple announcement made investors more jittery, plunging RIM stock on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and Wall Street Tuesday. It slipped more than three percent in Toronto to close at $36.92, and 2.8 percent on Nasdaq to close at $37.82.

Ouch.

I guess why iMessage affected RIM more than all the other messaging apps out there such as Whatsapp that allows messaging between iOS, Android and Blackberry devices, is because unlike Whatsapp, users could still hold on to their Blackberry devices and still communicate with their friends on other devices without having to make the switch, so imagine in a circle of friends, with only 2 on Blackberry’s and 6 on iOS devices, eventually they will start making use of the exclusive iMessage system, assuming peer pressure, the Blackberry users will then hope over to iOS devices so as not to feel left out.

Do you think RIM will be able to recover from this? Encrypted emails and BBM were some of its main key features, but nowadays sending encrypted email isn’t such an exclusive service anymore and thanks to the arrival of iMessage, is RIM doomed?