BBM for Android and iPhone is not coming this week atleast according to BlackBerry. BBM was supposed to release this Saturday and the release plan was spoiled by the leaked version of BBM for Android. The version that leaked was downloaded a million times and the beta version caused issues for BlackBerry.
According to a post on BlackBerry blog they want to completely the block the unauthorized version of BBM on Android before they release the final version. The post says since that is going to take some time, they are not planning to release this week.
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.
We attempted to address the problems caused by the unreleased version throughout the day on Saturday, but as active users of the unreleased app neared a million – and accelerated – it became clear that the only way to address the issue was to pause the rollout for both Android and iPhone.
BBM for Android launch is a mess last Saturday, many fake apps popped up in the Google Play Store claiming to be BBM from BlackBerry with identical developer names and this caused confusion among users. More than a million people already downloaded the version. Finally BlackBerry postponed the launch on both Android and iPhone.
