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RIM has long been rumored to be bringing Blackberry to rival operating systems. While the company denied it at every turn, we figured they’d want to start branching out and making waves on other platforms in the event that the failing Blackberry hardware business goes the way of the dodo.
While Blackberry isn’t completely dead yet, the company doesn’t want to waste any time in planting some roots on Android (and, in turn, iOS). It has officially announced that Blackberry Messenger — otherwise affectionately known as BBM — will be launching for the top mobile platforms this summer.
The app will be fully featured, with key ingredients like group messaging and screen sharing all coming to the rival platforms. According to The Verge, CEO Thorsten Heins believes Blackberry Messenger is ready to expand to other platforms because he believes Blackberry 10 is enough to win customers over on its own merit. We are calling for an early helping of “BS” on that one, but that’s the company line.
The service is expected to launch this summer, and will be free for anyone to download. While other group messaging platforms are gaining recognition on Android and Google planning to launch its own refined communication service sometime soon you may wonder whether or not there is a need for Blackberry Messenger anymore.
I personally still have a lot of friends who would like to use it, but have since migrated to options that are currently present on all platforms. With a solid enough app and key security and collaboration features Blackberry Messenger could once again become the go-to messaging platform even if you weren’t a Blackberry fan back in the golden days. We’ll have to await more information from RIM, but just be glad that it’s on its way soon.
Will you be using the service now that it is making its way over to your favorite OS of choice? Drop a vote in the poll below, and follow that up with a comment for some meaty discussion.
[polldaddy poll=7102814]
No.
Death to closed, proprietary communication protocols.
I’ll give it a try-whether it stays on my phone is a different story.
Idk, but it looks interesting… it depends on the performance and the features It will have …
If the app is a good messaging experience, I would check it out & use it depending on a couple things:
1. How much does Babel/Hangout(s) fill in the gaps in the meantime? This would be my preference at this point for widest spread of transparent or near-transparent messaging at this point. C2DM / GCM are pretty reliable *though* multi-device notification and delivery of gtalk messages is less than perfect over both general Internet & carrier mobile date networks and I’d love to see that improve/perfected.
2. Is it full BBM through RIM w. PIN, with message status, & with RIM push reliability? If so, awesome. If it’s a crappy internet IP messaging to BBM/PIN gateway with reduced reliability & delivery timeliness, then it’s not delivering a real BBM value to me. At this point, most of my contacts are off of BBM and the driver of a couple of years ago to be able to seemless message them via that service has pretty much evaporated as they have moved past Blackberry to other technologies.
Number of people I know that have BB’s… Zero. Chances of me bothering with BBM… Zero.
Came in here to say exactly that. This is 3 years too late.
Why in the world would i use BBM when there are hundreds are better alternatives that exist such as What’s App. BlackBerry is trying to penetrate are market that is already saturated (and not only with messaging services, phones especially) with a sub-par product. Some hardcore fans might like the BB phone but the fact is, it doesnt even compare with the Galaxy’s, HTC One’s and iPhone 5’s of today.
Nice, a review for a app that isnt out yet.
We already know what BBM is you dumbass, it’s not a new product
Well thanks for that. However I never said it was a new product or service. Just so you know, swearing or calling someone names while making a point make you look like an idiot.
No, what makes you look like an idiot is trying to be a smartass when you obviously are not even close to being smart
Smartass != Smart
BBM me haha. yeah . . . it’s been awhile
HAHAHAHA XD XD XD HAHA WITTY AND FUNNNY JOKE MATE
Seeing as how everyone I know uses SMS & Google’s various chat services, I can’t see myself switching to anything else unless most of the people I communicate with do.
More likely, Babel will become our go-to IM tool.
Having never owned a BB, can someone tell me what’s the real advantage to their messenger?
Nothing really to be honest. I’ve used it on a Curve before and it way overplayed, at least I think it is especially since Blackberry is almost on its deathbed.
It was good to me because i could chat with others without them having my email or phone number.
Yes. BBM is still the most popular messaging platform in most businesses including mine which involves the selling and trading of cellphones.
It pains me to say this, but I’d get far more use out of an iMessage for Android. Way more of my friends using that these days than BBM.
Amen. Gotta give credit where credit is due: Apple scored big with iMessage. Hopefully Google will announce a competitor tomorrow. Honestly, the best thing in the world would be if Google and Apple could somehow call a temporary cease-fire and make their apps play nicely together on this front.
The day that Google and Apple get a long would be the day the tech world comes to a halt.
Agreed, pretty much everyone I know is on iMessage. It’s a shame it’s a closed system because it’s actually great how well it’s integrated with their text app. Android has nothing that compares. Wonder if Google Babel will address this.
Very, very hopeful. Otherwise it’s useless to me. I don’t really use G+, G talk or hangouts, so if it integrates SMS into it then I’ll be all over it.
LOL!
No, I will not use it. They should have done this a couple of years ago when people were jumping ship due to their BBM contacts dwindling. The market is not inundated with similar apps that do the same thing across all platforms.
I think this is simply out of necessity. Many businesses have provided employees with BlackBerrys over the years, and many other employees used to get them on their own by choice (but no longer). Managers have probably been complaining that they could no longer communicate with their employees via BBM anymore. This allows them to atleast (try to) hold on to their corporate markets (always their best segment).
This would’ve been a big hit 2-3 years ago. I’m afraid BlackBerry lost their chance to stay relevant by waiting so long to release this. I wonder if they will go to a software only model, or if they’ll adopt Android as their new OS?
Who still has a Blackberry?
My whole school! I’m so glad I don’t have to swich over. I love android!
They’re trying again. And good on them.
Will give it a shortbread probably won’t keep it
I know quite a few people that still use BBM. So I’ll probably pick this up.
Although I’ll feel a little dirty doing so.
OMG… not sure if I will be as addicted to bbm as I was when i actually had a blackberry
why?
What exactly does BBM offer that Whatsapp or Line not already have? Line has group messaging, voice calls, and you can send photos, videos, audio, location, and more emoticons/stickers than anyone would want. Oh yea, and both Whatsapp and Line have been cross-platform for years. I’m pretty sure that the US is one of the last countries to still use sms which is why nobody outside the US cared when iMessage was launched.
What I was thinking. Right now my biggest issue with Whatsapp is people I communicate with that don’t use it.
I fail to see how adding yet another texting option solves that problem.
Dan
We need a cloth and or chloroform and go to BlackBerry and go shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I read about this BlackBerry in my social studies class
I kinda laugh at those that say it’s 2-3 years too late.. If it is hands down better than anything else out there at the moment, my guess is people will adopt it. I’ve never used it but from everything I hear, it’s the best messaging client available today.. It’s downfall is that it’s on a dying platform. I’ll give it a whirl and if it’s everything that I hear it is, I’ll probably end up using it. My guess is that you won’t go wrong using this and googles up coming service. Be nice if iMessage was cross platform as well.
iMessage will never be cross platform. You know Apple only complies with Apple.
Lol, I don’t know anyone who still uses a BlackBerry device…
Why are people asking “who has a blackberry anymore”? If this is going to be cross-platform, couldn’t you use BBM to communicate with other android/iOS users? I’ll definitely give it a try.
Yes, you’re indeed correct.
I guess I might give it a shot… what harm could come from trying it? I usually give apps a short run if they seem interesting enough. Whether I keep BBM on my phone will be another matter.
Everyone I know who used BlackBerry has switched to Android or iPhone. I work for one of the largest companies in the world and we started phasing out BB for iPhone in 2011. Very telling. Too bad they didn’t go for Android! My wife and Mother in law are much happier after switching from BB to Android. No need for BBM now, just too many years too late, as others mentioned here.
no thanks, i dont need my 8th messenger.
Had they done this when blackberry was relevant, maybe. Right now, I don’t know anyone who still uses it. Too little, too late
No. What’s the point? I’ve been chatting with BB friends over Whatsapp for years, why change?
5 years ago, maybe. Now? No way.
BlackBerry missed a great opportunity to take the messaging world by storm. Now there is a lot of competition out there, and my friends who used to be on BBM are now on iPhone or Android.
We need one messaging app that works every where (not Facebook please)
I will use this on my note ll. If its available on all platforms then I can message my friends no matter what device they have.
Do we need another proprietary messaging system? Let’s just assume for a moment that BBM is the absolutely best messaging service of all time… what happens when the Blackberry ecosystem finally collapses, are they just going to be a messaging service or does this get shut down? Personally, I try to not jump onto sinking ships…
Another RIM product that is too late this should have happened much sooner. No one I know still uses a BlackBerry, only very few people use BBM today. So why should anyone bother? Get Google Talk, WhatsApp or Viber they do the job and many people are using them now. I don’t see the point of getting an app so I can communicate with 2 people, when they might as well get an app so they can communicate with many people.
How could you not? It’ll be the only messaging platform that works for both iOS and Android. There is nothing that currently works for both OS’, and don’t tell me other apps that work because a lot of people don’t even use those apps. iMessage only works for iPhone and Android doesn’t really have anything that’s concrete, so BBM would work. Before iPhone and Android got huge, everyone had a blackberry and loved BBM, so everyone is already familiar with it and it’s the only thing anyone misses from blackberry. If it can finally be a stable messaging platform that works for BOTH iPhone and Android users, then it’ll work. Great job by RIM for finally getting this out to Android and iOS, although it is a few years late. Can’t wait to get BBM and finally be on the same level playing field when it comes to messaging my iPhone user friends.
Have you used WhatsApp before?
No, but that’s not my point. If I wanna message my friends (and a majority are iPhone users) I’d have to convince them all to get the app, and trust me, a lot won’t do that. BBM is more familiar and people have had it before.
You stated that no one uses other apps that work with both platforms, yet WhatsApp is immensely popular for exactly that.
But none of my friends have even heard of that. They all had blackberry’s before their iphones or at least were always hearing about bbm so that’s why it’d be easier to convince them to download bbm. Everyone has heard of bbm, but not WhatsApp. I bet that once bbm hits iOS and Android, it’ll be a hit.
I’m looking forward to giving it a try.
I hear ya…a lot of nay-sayers here that have a opinions about an BB app they have never used. Despite Android and Apple being much better than BB and with so many cross-platform messaging apps available, BBM is still the app that keeps BB users from leaving their BB behind for a new Android or iPhone. Despite my advice, I still have lots of friends that I left behind when I made the switch to Android…would like BBM back to re-join “the loop” without giving up my far superior Android…BBM is still better than any other messaging app (like Whatsapp) I’ve tried since leaving.
To late. BB should have been made the move.
Yeah I’ll use BBM…still have lots of die-hard Blackberry friends and would be nice to connect with them again with BBM on my Android.
We in Asia use What’s App or Line. They play nice across WP8, Android, iOS, Blackberry, and even some Nokia Asha phones. iMessage? What’s that?
I would like a android only messenger system, would be nice, but this could be cool