The release of BBM for Android has been a long protracted release process, that was promised by the end of ‘Summer’ this year. As we’re now in Spring in the Southern Hemisphere this should have been out now but in the Northern Hemisphere the season changes are judged on a slightly different time scale, and so we wait, but some people over at the Crackberry forums just can’t leaking the APK for anyone to use, but the problem is, you can load it but not use it.
Users who load the APK are essentially stuck at the load screen as the app waits for a ‘whitelisted’ BBM ID to be entered and only those in the Beta program will be allowed past the gates. Crackberry asked Blackberry about the leak and were advised :
The excitement around the upcoming launch of BBM for Android and iPhone users is amazing. We want to thank everyone for their enthusiasm, but wanted to let people know that the program is structured so that only those in the beta will be able to use the app. The version we’ve seen on the Web in the last couple of days can be downloaded, but will not work on devices that are not approved in the beta program.
The release of BBM for Android – and iOS – is still expected at the end of Summer, which in the Northern Hemisphere is the 21st of September. The problem is, does anyone actually want it? With a plethora of modern cross platform messaging options such as Whatsapp, Viber, Line and not to forget our favourite – Google Hangouts, now available, the arrival of BBM to Android and iOS is considered quite late and indeed could be considered too late to gain much of a market share and possibly make Blackberry relevant in a time when they desperately need to be thought of as relevant.
Still, it will be here soon and I’m sure most Android users will at least give it a look when it does arrive, who knows it may contain functionality that will blow everyone away but at this stage it’s still a puzzle as to why it’s taken this long to get the app over to the most popular mobile Operating Systems on the market.
