I, and likely others, had long given up on the idea that BBM would ever become a cross-platform application. There was a lot of evidence showing that Blackberry was working on the an app for Android and iOS but it didn’t seem like something they would ever open up because that was always one of their selling features.
Well today Blackberry has had a change of heart (or maybe they’re throwing up a hail mary?) and has officially announced that their once uber popular (and still pretty popular) messaging service will be coming to iOS and Android this summer. And not only is it coming, but it will be coming for free! However, you do need to have a device running iOS 6.0+ or Android 4.0+ and it does need to get approved by both app stores before it will be available.
For the time being, it will only support messaging services but Blackberry has stated that some of their other features such as BBM Voice and Screen Share will come in later updates.
I’m definitely glad to see that we’ll be getting another messaging service option that will hopefully be completely free. I’m mainly a WhatsApp user but as my “trial” expires I’m not looking forward to the $1/year. I know, it’s only a dollar but why spend a dollar when you can spend $0!
