BlackBerry says BBM will hit Android and iOS this summer; doesn’t confirm date
Everyone seems to be hounding T-Mobile for tweeting that BBM will arrive on Android and iOS on 27th June, conveniently forgetting that it was BlackBerry Worldwide who initially mentioned that date!
It clearly seems like we haven’t heard the last of this. In what is becoming a trend, “launching this date; not launching this date” rigmarole seems to have become a norm. Now, the same madness has been applied to the BlackBerry Messenger. Just a few days back, BlackBerry Worldwide had sent out a tweet mentioning that BlackBerry Messenger will be arriving on Android and iOS on 27th June. However, it seems that the moment T-Mobile sent out a tweet yesterday mentioning the same, all hell has broken loose. The tweet has since been deleted, but at least that elicited an official statement from the company. The Verge reports that BlackBerry has released a statement talking about the cross-platform version of BBM.
“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.”
Incidentally, it has been easily forgotten that BlackBerry Worldwide started the entire rumor mongering in the first place! Clearly, we do not know when BBM’s cross platform presence will finally become a reality. What is confirmed is that BBM will work on Android smartphones running Android 4.0 or higher, or iPhones updated to iOS 6 or higher.
Source: TheVerge