BlackBerry Delays Launch of BBM Apps For iOS, Android

USA Today reports: "BlackBerry on Saturday hit pause on the rollout of iPhone and Android apps for its popular BlackBerry Messenger mobile social messaging service after an unreleased version of the Android app was posted online. That version saw 1.1 million active users in the first 8 hours, the company said, but the unofficial version "caused issues," which the company continued to address throughout the day. The company did not specify what the issues were."

Comments

At least it's a business plan

[hessian]

Transitioning from hardware/software company to software company making products for former competitor's hardware is at least a business plan, which is more than RIM has had for years.

Re:At least it's a business plan

[lister king of smeg]

If by business plan you mean to follow the plan of mostly destroying your company by releasing hardware 2 years late. then making a complete bollocks of releasing what's left that's worth saving, vis a vis BBM, yeah it's a plan...

But at least they're consistent.

No they have two more thing of value that everyone else in the mobile world would pay through the nose for;

1. Patents lots and lots of patent on smart phones and mobile devices.
2. They also have a brand recognition and reputation in the corporate/government world that any company would love to have.

Whoever ends up buying the blackberry name will when the enterprise game. I look for a bidding war in the next year between Microsoft Google Apple and possible Samsung over Blackberry's patent profile and the trademark. Whoever gets the name will probably use it as their branding for their enterprise line of phones, and whoever gets the patent will have a war chest that they will be able to brow beat the competition into submission with.

Sabotage?

[Espectr0]

The conspiracy theorist ideas inside me tell me sabotage may be involved. I don't buy that a beta version caused server issues that prompted to halt the rollout.

40% of the company was canned.

The ios version (which i got by creating an Australia account) also had issues with connecting, which is expected. I don't think Blackberry was ready for this.