Breaking: BlackBerry halts rollout of BBM on iPhone and Android
Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 9:59PM 
BlackBerry has decided to stop the rollout of its BlackBerry Messenger App on iOS and Android indefinitely. After sending out a press releases days ago promising that they would begin seeding the versions of the app on Google Play this morning and on the iOS App Store by tomorrow, it seems the big launch has been halted because of a number of problems.
While some regions including New Zealand, Australia and parts of Asia Pacific received the updates on both Android and iOS (1.1 million downloads have already taken place), it seems a leaked version of the Android variant has been cited as the reason why BlackBerry is pulling back the rollout.
Many users started the day downloading what they thought was BBM on their Android devices only to realize that they had downloaded one of dozens of spoofed apps in the Google Play Store claiming to be BBM, BlackBerry Messenger and from BlackBerry. BlackBerry had released very specific times for their apps to be available.
"BBM will be available as a free download for Android smartphones running Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean (Android 4.x) beginning at 7AM EDT on September 21. BBM for iPhones running iOS 6 and iOS 7 will become available for each market on the App Store schedule of 12:01 AM local time on September 22. For more information, or to download BBM for Android or iPhone, visit www.BBM.com," read the BlackBerry release issued on September 18.
The lucky few who have downloaded the iOS app will be able to use it but those running the renegade 'leaked' version on Android will not since that version will soon be disabled. Talk about buzzkill. After this experience, will users be less likely to want to download the app or subscribe to the service when it does begin to roll out again?
With poor sales resulting in layoffs affecting 4,500 employess (a third of their workforce) and bad press all around, BlackBerry did not need a failure of this magnitude, specially since it was such a hyped product launch.
Source: The Verge
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