BlackBerry Messenger

Users looking to get into BlackBerry’s much-delayed BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) – which had its rollout put on hold 2 days ago – will have to wait until next week at the earliest, the company stated today in a blog post addressing the delays.

Andrew Bocking, head of BBM at BlackBerry, stated:

Last week, an unreleased, older version of the BBM for Android app was posted on numerous file sharing sites. We were aware of an issue with this unreleased version of the BBM for Android app. This older version resulted in volumes of data traffic orders of magnitude higher than normal for each active user and impacted the system in abnormal ways. The version we were planning to release on Saturday addressed these issues, however we could not block users of the unreleased version if we went ahead with the launch.

Last Saturday, over a million users of the leaked BBM client for Android tried to activate an account and BlackBerry’s servers failed to keep up with the demand. BlackBerry aborted the roll out, and began work on blocking the leaked version of the app.

BlackBerry says they’re also working on fortifying their servers for the expected rush of account activations when they do release the app officially – sometime in the future.

This comes at an inopportune time for the beleaguered BlackBerry, who recently predicted they’ll post a US $950 million loss for Q2 2014, and announced their intention to lay off 4,500 employees as they restructure themselves to focus on the enterprise market. Despite this, the company today announced that it will be acquired by a consortium lead by Canadian venture capital firm Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited for around US $4.7 billion.

We’ll keep you updated as soon as BlackBerry advises us when they are going to have another crack at releasing their messaging app… but it won’t be this week.

Are you looking forward to BBM on Android? Let us know in the comments.

Source: BlackBerry Blog.
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    Greg

    I know somebody who had a Blackberry two years ago. I might have been interested in using it to chat with them then. Maybe. Probably not.

    TT

    I can’t understand why care about BBM so much? First it is not the best message app and there are a lot of IMs (hangouts, Line, Whatsapp, Wechat) better than this. Also, even the company will disappear very soon.

    bigdan1985

    I’d be interested in it, if only to have a fiddle around it. Only delaying the inevitable.

    Phil Tann

    I’ll certainly look at it (I had the leaked version with limited success) when it hits full release, but I just can’t see it being a commercial success on Android or iOS.

    bigdan1985

    Yup. I’ve only known one person anywhere to have had a Blackberry, and that was for business. No longer uses one, and I’m no longer working for them.