Back in May, BlackBerry announced that the popular BlackBerry Messaging service, commonly known as BBM, would be made available on both Android and iOS platform during the summer. However, the Canadian smartphone maker did not give out an exact date for the release. Therefore, when Slashgear revealed a tweet from T-Mobile UK on Thursday, June 6, which cited that BlackBerry Messenger for Android and iOS could be downloaded from June 27th, many thought that the reports were true.
The original tweet said, “Great news – BlackBerry Messenger will be available to download on iOS and Android from June 27th! #BBM pic.twitter.com/PbG1uknM3h
— T-MOBILE UK (@TMobileUK) June 6, 2013”
However, later T-Mobile deleted this tweet and it was learnt that the information shared was not correct, as Business Insider was the first to report that sources who are familiar with the scenario have shared with the site that the BBM release is not happening on June 27th. Here is an original extract from the report: “According to a source with knowledge of BlackBerry’s plans, that date is not correct. In fact, our source called all those stories you may have read “bogus.””
Then, BlackBerry itself came out with an official statement in order to clear the things. The spokesman of BlackBerry said that, “On 14 May, BlackBerry announced plans to make its ground-breaking mobile social network, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), available to iOS and Android users this summer, subject to approval by the Apple App Store and Google Play. While there have been reports that BBM will be available to iOS and Android on June 27, this is not accurate. We will communicate an update as soon as we have an availability date to share.”
With this announcement finally BlackBerry squashed all rumours regarding the release of BBM for Android and iOS on June 27th. Nevertheless, users are still anxiously waiting for the launch of BBM on platforms other than BB10, but only those will be able to enjoy the service, who are running 4.0 or above version of Jelly Bean and iOS 6 for Apple devices.
This will be the first time in the history that BlackBerry is going to roll out its service on rival platforms, which could prove risky for the Canadian company. Along with the iconic QWERTY keyboard, BBM is an exclusive feature of BlackBerry smartphones. BlackBerry will make the limited edition of BBM available for Android and iOS users, but later it will launch an upgraded version.
Source: iPhoneinCanada, TNW
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