BlackBerry says launch of BBM app for Android and iOS delayed by at least a week

By Trevor Mogg September 24, 2013

blackberry bbm app for android and ios delayed messenger — Image used with permission by copyright holder

BlackBerry Messenger was all set to launch for Android and iOS devices last weekend, but the unexpected appearance of an unreleased version of the app resulted in the company postponing the rollout.

Andrew Bocking, head of BBM, on Monday offered up a little more information on the situation, explaining his team will need at least a week to sort out the issue.

While the Android version of BBM was scheduled to hit Google Play on Saturday, with an iOS version arriving on iTunes Sunday, the appearance on file sharing sites of an older version of the BBM for Android app caused BlackBerry to halt the rollout.

“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,” Bocking wrote in a post on the official BlackBerry blog. “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.”

He said his team tried to address the issues caused by the unreleased version throughout 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.”

The team is now working to block the unreleased version of the Android app and ensure the system will be able to deal with any similar situations in the future.

“While this may sound like a simple task – it’s not,” Bocking wrote. “This will take some time and I do not anticipate launching this week.”

So if you are an Android or iOS user hoping to try out BlackBerry’s messaging app, all you can do is sit tight. And with so much news swirling around the Canadian company just now – we’re talking major job cuts, monumental financial losses, and a possible buyout worth $4.7 billion – let’s just hope the BBM team is able to focus on the task in hand.

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