BlackBerry have had a turbulent couple of years recently. There was a time when BlackBerry was everywhere. Once Nokia phones had come and gone, BlackBerry took over as the dominant manufacturer and literally everyone had one. They were (at the time) the best way to get your emails on the go. With so many people using a BlackBerry, it was inevitable that their in-house messaging app would take-off and it certainly did. BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) quickly become a very widely used service with everyone having their own pin and BBMing everyone they knew. That said, the last few years have seen BlackBerry sales slump dramatically
In spite of the steady decline, a lot of the once BlackBerry owners miss BBM. There was something sweet about the service and although we now have a whole bunch of messenger apps available, BBM is still managing to (just about) hold on. Late in 2013, saw the messenger service finally release its long-awaited android app. This was followed by the app receiving voice support at the start of last year. Well, technology has moved on since then and now the latest news is that the company are at CES and have today announced that their BBM service is very soon about to land on your watch. Your smartwatch that is. Yep, if you were one of those who aches for BBM to return and currently own a smartwatch then very soon you will be able to get and send your messages directly from your smartwatch.
The announcement today confirmed what one would expect from BBM on your smartwatch including the ability to “See who a new message is from and read it”. As well as “Review and accept invites from would-be BBM contacts while on the go”. In addition, you can also flip through your messages and set pre-defined response messages from your smartphone. The last of the announced features include compatibility with voice control and Google Now to allow for hands-free responding to messages. In terms of when, the announcement did not provide any specifics on when the service will go live and instead simply stated “available soon”. On a very last note, the announcement also hinted that we might be seeing more from BBM for Android Wear in the future as this is “only our first step to support cross-platform wearable technology”. So were you a BBM user? Looking forward to BBM on your Wear device? Let us know.