The Canadian company, BlackBerry, has had their time in the spotlight, some of it great, but most of it disappointing. If it were not for poor management and lack of vision, BlackBerry could very well be the Samsung of smartphones. They are struggling with the hardware side of things, as they continue to place emphasis on what they claim was their forte, software. One of their most popular pieces of software was BlackBerry Messenger or BBM. It is their proprietary instant messenger and video service that was once only for BlackBerry devices when it was released in 2005. As sales of BlackBerry’s hardware were rapidly disappearing, they released BBM for Android and iOS devices. It was a little rough around the edges at first and got off to a rocky start, but it has slowly grown into a very competent package.
It was this past April that BBM Video became available in the US and Canada and now it is right up there with Hangouts, WhatsApp, and more. BBM once had a collection of games that could be played via BBM, but those died off. However, we are happy to say that BBM and Softgames collaborated to bring the instant play games back to BBM. Twenty HTML5 titles will span 15 countries – of course including the US, United Kingdom, India, and more. There is a Discover Tab within BBM where you will have instant access to the free games. What is nice about playing a game through BBM is that you can interact with other BBM users and compare high scores. It is just another add-on to enhance BBM’s usefulness. The more you can do via the BBM app, the more likely you are to download and use the application, as there are many messenger apps to choose from.
There was a pent up desire for BBM when it finally debuted in September 2013 with a leaked APK downloaded by over 1.1 million users. BlackBerry had to suspend the official release until October 2013 where over 5 million downloads were accessed in the first eight hours, and it ended up with over 10 million downloads its first day. Now you can do a host of things on BBM – Video calls or Screen Share over Wi-Fi, send and receive messages with unlimited length, apply a personal BBM display picture and status, share photos, videos, and more. The ability to play instant games should make BBM even more appealing.