Today, BBM is supposed to be rolling out to the Google Play Store and to the Apple AppStore. In fact, it was supposed to launch at 7am EDT for Android, but it’s a bit late, probably because Blackberry didn’t realize that when you publish an app, it takes a few hours for it to be available to everyone. Engadget is reporting that BBM is available for iOS in New Zealand right now, and expected to hit more countries pretty soon. Of course, the Android version is still missing in action.
This week has been kind of a bad week for Blackberry. They announced just yesterday that they were laying off 40% of their workforce after losing $1 billion in Q2 of the 2014 fiscal year. Now that’s a major hit for a company that used to be the company for smartphones and enterprise security. Blackberry has also decided to remove themselves from the consumer market. So it looks like they are finally going to simply focus on the software, which sounds like a good idea. Blackberry is still the leader in enterprise software, and they’ve long needed to take the Google approach with their services. Which is to bring it cross-platform and get more people using it. Instead of just those with Blackberries.
So Blackberry Messenger is a bit late, never fear we’re keeping an eye on the Play Store to see when it does become available. There are plenty of fake BBM apps in the Play Store so you’ll want to be careful. There’s even one that was updated/published today, that almost got me. This link has all of Blackberry Limited’s apps, which are the real ones. So once Blackberry Messenger is available, you’ll see it there.
Hopefuly BBM for Android isn’t too far away. I know a lot of people are anxious to try it out. It’ll be my first time using BBM since 2010. How many of you are going to use BBM instead of Hangouts now?