Jakarta. Elang Mahkota Teknologi, or Emtek, one of Indonesia's biggest media groups, has bought the license to provide digital media content over the Blackberry Messenger platform over the next six years for $207.5 million, as part of its effort to strengthen grips on the company, said in a statement on Tuesday (28/06).

Under the deal Emtek, which controls about 22 percent of Indonesia's prime-time TV audience, would make available content from its free to air television station Indosiar and SCTV, online video platform Iflix and a library of more than 100,000 hours of TV and premium programs to over 90 million BBM users worldwide.

“We see a significant opportunity to grow the consumer BBM business globally and are excited to invest in research and development to further advance BBM,” Alvin Sariaatmadja, chief executive, said in a statement.

While the Blackberry mobile device market has seen an abrupt decline in Indonesia, the company's messenger platform holds strong, growing to nearly 60 million monthly active users in the country.

The content deal with Emtek should give Blackberry an edge in competing with other popular massaging service like Facebook's Whatsapp and South Korea's Line.

“Emtek’s impressive background and pedigree in entertainment, content and technology makes them the perfect partner to maximize the potential of BlackBerry’s messaging platform while meeting our financial and operational goals,” said John Chen, executive chairman and CEO of BlackBerry.

“We wanted to continue to offer our users even more with the most content-rich media and new services such as e-commerce, video, music and games,” Chen said.