BlackBerry Messenger Coming to Android and IOS 21Sep2013

[S.Prime]

BBM will be available as a free download for Android smartphones running Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean (Android 4.x) beginning at 7AM EDT on 21 September. BBM for iPhones running iOS 6 and iOS 7 will become available for each market on the App Store schedule of 12:01 AM local time on 22 September.

[Babyfacemagee]

That's interesting.  I'm kind of surprised that Blackberry would open it up to other OS platforms before a sale of the company.  I wonder if that adds or takes away from its value.

[S.Prime]

In more BlackBerry news Yahoo! finance reports, that Blackberry will remove itself from the consumer market, opting to focus on enterprise and end-to-end solutions instead. Peliminary financial reports for the past quarter show loses reaching $1 billion.

Blackberry will also cut 4,500 jobs, and attempt to reduce their operating expenditures by 50% before the end of Q1 FY 2015.

In addition to the operating loss of $950-995 million, the Waterloo, Canada company will also see a pre-tax inventory charge of $930-960 million, primarily attributable to Z10 devices.

The comapny expects their adjusted net loss to hover in the $250 million range, or about $0.50 per share.

Considering the dismal news, I am like BFM, and cannot see the value in offering BB Messenger to Android and IOS, but that may change when we see the business model that emerges.

[StewMc]

They should have done this years ago. Sounds like a desperation move as the company swirls down the toilet.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[S.Prime]

BBM has not shown up in Google's US Play Store yet, so don't be fooled by fake apps. The authentic app should be marketed by BlackBerry Limited.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[JayJ]

Personally I don't see the need for this, BBM is kind of out dated but for those that do, please be careful. There has been several fake BBM applications on the Play store so just be mindful what you are installing. I'm sure Google have removed the offending applications, the developer should give any fake anyway so you have been warned.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[S.Prime]

BBM users reached a million in a matter of days on an unreleased version, so if you are wondering what happened to BBM, this is the official word from Blackberry:

Hi Android and iPhone users,

This is Andrew Bocking, head of BBM at BlackBerry. As a follow up to our first blog post on Saturday, I want to take a moment to provide you with an update on the rollout of BBM on Android and iPhone.

Last week, an unreleased, older version of the BBM for Android app was posted on numerous file sharing sites. We were aware of an issue with this unreleased version of the BBM for Android app. This older version resulted in volumes of data traffic orders of magnitude higher than normal for each active user and impacted the system in abnormal ways. The version we were planning to release on Saturday addressed these issues, however we could not block users of the unreleased version if we went ahead with the launch.

We attempted to address the problems caused by the unreleased version throughout the day on Saturday, but as active users of the unreleased app neared a million – and accelerated – it became clear that the only way to address the issue was to pause the rollout for both Android and iPhone.

The team is now focused on adjusting the system to completely block this unreleased version of the Android app when we go live with the official BBM for Android app. We are also making sure that the system is reinforced to handle this kind of scenario in the future. While this may sound like a simple task – it’s not. This will take some time and I do not anticipate launching this week.

Thank you for your patience while we take the time needed to deliver the experience you expect from BBM. We will continue to provide you with updates here on InsideBlackBerry.com and through @BBM on Twitter. We will notify everyone who has pre-registered on BBM.com when BBM is available on Android and iPhone.

Andrew Bocking
EVP, BBM

[S.Prime]

I received my email from BBM saying that I could sign up for BBM, so I went through the process and have it installed, now I just need to find someone to test it with. The app is available from Play Store and sign up is being rolled out in stages to prevent server over load.

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