Following today's announcement of the BlackBerry Z30, the Canadian company has also announced that BlackBerry Messenger for Android and iOS will be launching later this week.The BBM for Android app is expected to be available starting at 7:00 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 21, while BBM for iPhone will hit the App Store at 12:01 a.m. local time on Sept. 22.BlackBerry notes that BBM for Android will require Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher, while BBM for iPhone will be available to users on iOS 6 and iOS 7.
BBM for Android and BBM for iOS will feature many of the same features available on BBM on BlackBerry. These include basic chat, BBM Groups multi-person chats, delivery and read receipts, photo sharing and a unique PIN that'll be assigned to each user. BlackBerry promises that it's planning to add features like BBM Voice and BBM Video calling as well as BBM Channel communities in the future.
The BBM Messenger has been one of the BlackBerry platforms greatest appeals allowing its users a quick, free and reliable way to keep in touch with their friends without having to use text messaging. While there are many alternative messaging services available today, BBM has had a strong fanbase who solely rely on the service for their communication.
Now with many past BlackBerry fans having switched to new platforms, it will be interesting to see if the introduction of the messenger on their new platforms will bring back their BBM pride. We are looking forward to see how many users download BBM for Android and iOS, but we are more interested to see how many of them continue to use the service on their devices.
source - Inside BlackBerry