The US will run out of borrowing authority in mid-October, Treasury secretary Jack Lew warned on Monday, raising the prospect of financial chaos if Congress does not act to raise the so-called “debt limitâ€.
Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry is seriously considering spinning off its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service into its own, subsidiary company, according to reports.
The Wall Street Journal claims the new company would be called BBM Inc., and would operate with greater autonomy than the BBM division does now, citing the omnipresent "people familiar with the matter."
Even as BlackBerry has battled to boost the sales of its coolly received Q5, Q10, and Z10 smartphones, the company has reportedly been moving executives into the BBM division with an eye to plumping the service as an alternative to such popular offerings as WhatsApp and WeTalk.
BBM currently serves some 60 million users, according to BlackBerry's own figures. But although it was one of the earliest such messaging services, it has since been surpassed by rivals that run on Android and iOS. WhatsApp, the biggest of the newcomers, boasts 200 million users.
