“At this point it is iOS and Android, and that’s iOS phones running iOS 6 and higher” Bhardwaj said of the app. “Smartphone is our real focus and again it comes back to what BBM is. If you look BBM and the engagement and the activity, it’s because it is mobile, because people are on the go.”

Expanding BlackBerry Messenger support across rival platforms has been a long-rumored strategy for BlackBerry, though there’s controversy around whether the decision will now be too little, too late. BlackBerry OS has dropped a place in the worldwide smartphone OS market share league, it was announced today, with Windows Phone taking third place instead.

Whether that will mean BBM for iPhone and Android works as a gateway drug of sorts, or merely as a route for BlackBerry owners looking to leave the platform behind and yet still keep in touch with old friends on a new device, remains to be seen.

Even without a dedicated iPad version, that’s not to say iPad and iPad mini owners won’t be able to access the iPhone BBM app. However, they’ll be stuck using screen-doubling until BlackBerry gets around to coding up a tablet-specific interface, and there’s no telling when that will actually happen.

Still, there’s at least a hint that such support is in the pipeline, as well as other form-factors where BBM could roost, beyond mobile. “I think when you look at things like Smart TVs and desktops, those are definitely areas for exploration,” Bhardwaj teased.

IMAGE: BlackBerry Blog

The BBM app will support all iOS devices running iOS 6 and higher, as well as Android devices running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and higher. BlackBerry said that it would be bringing some of the same features of BBM over to iOS and Android, including groups functionality, as well as voice features and screen sharing in later releases.

BlackBerry also announced what they’re calling BBM Channels, which is a new social feature for BBM that will allow companies and celebrities to create a fan page of sorts that BBM users can follow. Whenever a BBM Channel gets updated with new content, users who follow these pages will see notifications for the updates in BlackBerry Hub. Users will also be able to comment and share posts with friends, as well as the ability to create their own channels. In the simplest of terms, Channels is essentially BlackBerry’s version of a social network.

Channels is still in beta, but the company is planning to update it several times until it will fully launch sometime this summer — most likely in conjunction with the BBM launch for iOS and Android. It’s still up in the air whether or not Channels will be the boost that BlackBerry needs to gain more users, but we’ll certainly find out come this summer. The company already has 60 million BBM users, with 10 billion messages being sent every day. With the release of an iOS and Android version, those numbers should jump significantly.

According to the email, current subscribers will be billed in April, and will then begin to see songs turn grey in May; once grey, the song will no longer be playable, with the entire service going dark on June 2. These dates could change, per a postscript in the message. Users should begin making their transition the service this month.

Says the email sent to subscribers today: “BBM Music service will be discontinued as of June 2, 2013*. For paying customers, April is the last month that you will be billed. In May, as your BBM contacts stop using the service, songs in your playlists will begin to turn grey and will no longer be available.”

Once Blackberry Music is no longer available, you won’t have any use for the BB Music app, which is why removal instructions were provided. Users can make the transition more comfortable by taking advantage of the Rdio offer, which can be redeemed by following directions also included in the email, which you can read in full here.

[via Crackberry]

If you log in on your desktop computer, your Android smartphone, your Chromebook, or anything in-between, today you’re able to access your Gmail account. Not quite so solid is the connection between the many odds and ends in Google’s chat environment. If Google did indeed create a single chat service for any and all environments, anyone would be able to work with it as easily as they do Gmail – app or no.

The word on the street today is that Google Babble would work on many – if not all – mobile products as well as in-browser for desktop machines. BlackBerry own BBM – BlackBerry Messenger – continues to be one of their “unique” services that users love to a degree that keeps them stuck tight to the hardware. Apple uses Messages which now works between mobile and desktop machines seamlessly.

Even the app called WhatsApp has been trying to capitalize on the one-app cross-platform messaging gap that exists in the Google universe right this minute. So what’s holding Google back?

Perhaps nothing! If Google Babble does exist, you may want to bank on it being revealed around or at Google I/O 2013 – that’s starting on the 14th of May – coming up quick! Have a peek at the timeline below for more information on Google’s recent innovations with Hangouts in Google+ to see what we very well may be experiencing in Babble soon!

[via Geek]

This update shows the new task manager as an element entitled “BlackBerry Remember.” Here you’ll be able to sync with Outlook for email and work directly with Evernote right out of the box. This information has been shown in the slides here and now as well as in the original gold SDK provided by RIM quite recently.

With BBM you’ll soon be able to share much more intuitively, too. You’ll be able to capture a photo, tap one of your vast collection of apps to share outright – Picasa, Facebook, Flickr, and more veing shown right here in slide form, add comments, and share. You can share to one person or to your newly forge BBM Group if you wish. You’ll be able to “seamlessly” transfer between video chat and screen sharing as well – great for directions for businesses.

With BlackBerry Remember you’re going to be able to capture and keep clean all of your notes from all different directions. You can “turn ideas into action”, so say the leaked slides here, and sync with a variety of services. Microsoft Outlook is, of course, first on the list of connections, and Evernote has been tipped more than once as well.

[via CrackBerry]

There are sixteen new emoticons, shown below, as well as BBM upgrade notifications within the app itself, allowing users to easily switch to each new version. Finally, there’s BBID sync, pulling in the BBM profile, Groups, and Contacts, and linking them to each user’s BlackBerry ID.

It’s BBM Voice which will get the most attention, however, RIM’s attempt to keep the messaging system competitive with rivals such as Apple’s iMessage and Google’s Gchat. A single voice button in the top right hand corner of each text conversation begins a call, directly from the chat itself, rather than forcing the user to go through the contacts app.

RIM says BlackBerry 5 devices will get BBM Voice functionality in the new year, and the calls are free over WiFi. It may take 24hrs or so for the new app to arrive in your local version of the App World, so keep checking.

First up is BlackBerry Messenger integration, which allows users to find their Messenger friends and initiate a chat via Facebook. If you’re keen to find out which Facebook friends are also using BlackBerry Messenger, you can share your PIN via your Facebook wall. Users can then invite BBM-using friends on their Facebook to join them on BlackBerry Messenger.

Unfriending Facebook friends is easier now, as well, with the new app version allowing users to unfriend via Facebook for BlackBerry. Overall, this combination of new features and BlackBerry Messenger integration allows BB users to combine the best of both worlds, maximizing their BlackBerry Messenger and Facebook accounts while merging the best features from both together.

As for the new look, you’ll find revamped icons and other goodies. Version 3.3 of Facebook for BlackBerry allows users to view images faster and at a higher resolution than previously supported. BB users can toggle between full-size and thumbnail views of photos, and can now download them to the BlackBerry handset for later use.

[via BlackBerry]

Word that RIM has such a feature planned has been circulating for awhile, but this is the first time any official confirmation has been given. When visiting Jakarta several weeks ago, the company’s CEO Thorsten Heins hinted at this feature, saying that BlackBerry Messenger is as strong of a platform for financial transactions as it is for communication. RIM’s Managing Director of South Asia Operations Hastings Singh then offered BBC this statement in an interview.

“Indonesia is very important for RIM. It is a huge market for us … So we are offering a new innovation – BBM Money which will be launched in Indonesia – first in the world – shortly. It is a peer-to-peer transfer service that anyone with a Blackberry phone can use to transfer funds to someone else with a Blackberry phone.”

BlackBerry has been losing ground in the market, with government agencies dropping it in favor of more popular mobile operating systems, including the NTSB, while consumers largely select either Android or the iPhone. Despite its trouble battling against Android and iOS, BlackBerry is still massively popular in Indonesia, where it has over 50-percent of the marketshare. There’s no info on when Money will be available in Indonesia and beyond, but perhaps we’ll know more once BB10 launches next year.

[via Tech Crunch]

BBM Voice allows users to talk and text at the same time, and to simply voice chat without texting if desired. A voice chat can be initiated directly without the need to text first. The feature is presently available as a Beta, and requires BlackBerry OS 6 or higher; plans are in place to eventually push the feature out to BB smartphones running version 5.

A “visual indicator” is provided for indicating when one of the user’s contacts are available to take a voice chat. The new feature is compatible with standard BlackBerry voice accessories, such as a Bluetooth headset, a perhaps necessary item if you plan to talk and text at the same time. Users can chat via BBM Voice using the speakerphone, making it, for all intents and purposes, no different than placing an ordinary call.

Vice President of BBM and Social Communities at RIM T.A. McCann offered this statement. “The new BBM Voice feature is for when you’re travelling and you want to call home without worrying about phone charges. It’s for when you have news you can’t wait to share, for quickly explaining complicated details, and collaborating with colleagues. Whenever your ideas are too big for text, there’s BBM Voice.”

That will help save precious screen real estate on the N-Series BlackBerry 10 device, which feature a touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard. Performing certain gestures will show and hide user elements such as context menus, while keyboard shortcuts will be employed for training messaging actions. Hitting “C”, for example, will bring up a new chat, while “S” will jump the user straight into search.

It looks like RIM is still tweaking the design, and as the screenshots suggest the onscreen keyboard for the L-Series device also isn’t finalized. A previous leak indicated that BBM would also feature theme support, allowing users to switch between a light and dark theme. The dark theme would be advantageous for the OLED screens employed on both phones, with pure black elements reducing power draw from the screens, maximizing battery efficiency as a result.

One of the options is to completely scrap BlackBerry 10 and license Windows Phone 8 from Microsoft. Steve Ballmer has reportedly approached RIM in the past hoping to form some sort of partnership, similar to its deal with Nokia, although the Waterloo-based company has declined such offers. RIM could also look to Microsoft to buy a stake in the company, although it’s not as attractive a proposition as the company would lose its independence.

The other option would be for RIM to sell off its private network infrastructure and software services to a private equity firm or another tech company. RIM’s servers could then be retooled to work on other mobile operating systems like iOS or Android. That’s a plan similar to what former co-CEO Jim Balsillie wanted to pursue, a course of action that was ultimately nixed.

Sources indicate that RIM’s board would prefer to keep developing BlackBerry 10 and see it through to an eventual release in the first quarter of 2013, although one has to wonder if the company can hold out for that long. The company yesterday reported a net loss of $518m, with revenue also down a third compared to the previous quarter. RIM stated that 5,000 jobs will be cut from the company.

In fact, the company will supposedly use several different themes for BBM in Blackberry 10. The first mixes things up with a white and green color scheme that looks surprisingly easy on the eyes, while the second adds black into the mix. There’s a technical reason for that change: both handsets detailed yesterday will make use of OLED screens. When presented with pure black elements, OLED pixels completely turn off, unlike LCDs which are still backlit regardless. That can lead to drastic power savings, with one of the leaked BBM slides estimating a 25% decrease.

Tweaking the colors even further in favour of darker tones such as grey and blue will lead to even bigger savings: 75%, or so the slide claims. It’s a trick that manufacturers such as Samsung have used in the past to maximize battery efficiency combined with aggressive auto-brightness settings. Otherwise, feast your eyes on the redesign above and below, which seems to fall in line with what we’ve seen so far from BlackBerry 10.

[Thanks, Jack.]

RIM executives reportedly came up with a strategy that would allow the company to license BBM across several platforms, dubbed “SMS 2.0”. Opinions within the company varied, with some saying it would further hurt BlackBerry handset sales, while others believed it would help with brand awareness and keep the company relevant. The WSJ has learned that the plan has been scrapped at the behest of Thorsten Heins.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Heins didn’t want to pursue an licensing deals in general, and the BBM strategy “was not up for discussion.” Heins instead wants to focus on BlackBerry 10 as well as the new phones RIM is releasing towards the end of this year with the revamped operating system.

It would have marked a drastic change for the company, who so far have stuck hard and fast to the singular BlackBerry handset, OS, and services vision. The plan would have allowed carriers to offer cheaper data tariffs that would only allow access to select social networking platforms. BlackBerry Messenger, however, would be included, letting devices other than BlackBerrys connect to the platform.

The proposed shift didn’t go down well with others at the company, not to mention investors, which led to Balsillie’s resignation as co-CEO in January. Carriers, however, were interested in the plan, knowing that customers would be enticed away from featurephones and make the jump to entry level smartphones.

The plan would have relied on RIM’s private network, with the possibility that it wouldn’t be able to cope under the additional strain. It famously crashed last year, leaving millions of BlackBerry users without service. Ultimately the plans were vetoed, and RIM has decided to double down on its BlackBerry 10 strategy. Those devices aren’t expected to hit the market until later this year.

[via The Next Web]

In the Facebook for BlackBerry smartphones v3.0 app and Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones v3.0, there’s a new “Share with BBM” button, while in BlackBerry Travel v2.5 it’s possible to share upcoming flights and other travel arrangements via IM. BBM Music, meanwhile, pulls in recommended contacts directly into the app, broadening the possible range of tracks from others you can listen to and comment on.

Finally, BlackBerry App World allows users to share their latest download via BBM. It also supports NFC – for phones with the BlackBerry Tag technology – to make sharing an app between devices more straightforward.

A new version of BlackBerry Messenger itself, v6.2, now gets animated avatars, along with BlackBerry Tag integration. It also promises faster voice notes transfer and a more straightforward way to update a profile message.

The updated Twitter app is available to download now. The other apps – Facebook, Travel, App World and BBM Music, along with BBM version 6.2 – will arrive over the coming ten days.

That doesn’t mean all BBM chats will be automatically monitored. Law enforcement bodies would need a wiretap warrant in order to access messages that pass through RIMs server which currently resides in Mumbai. A spokesperson for RIM said that “We are holding talks with the government, but there has been no issue from our side regarding accessibility to BBM services ever since our server was installed in the country.”

The Intelligence Bureau isn’t worried about messages that pass through BlackBerry Enterprise Servers, noting that conversations that take place there typically happen between company employees. The agency says they need access to BBM chats as part of a wider scope against terrorism, in the hope that it might prevent future attacks.

The process to intercept a message doesn’t sound like it would lend itself well to a time critical situation, though. A security agency would have to be granted permission to tap an individual’s BBM pin from the Union Home Ministry, then send a request to the carrier in order to access the necessary data. The Department of Telecommunications is considering applying the same policy to Nokia’s Push Mail service, although iOS and Android remain unaffected due to their traditional security methods.

[via Electronista]

The rest of this device isn’t all that extraordinary, but we’ve certainly got a solid everyday business use device on our hands here. This is the Curve 9320 with a full physical QWERTY keyboard, chicklet style, with 512MB of RAM inside, an EDOF camera, and a collection of connectivity abilities. You’ll be able to work with whatever carrier this device ends up being on plus Wifi, Bluetooth, microUSB, and more.

On the other hand, considering the vast amount of comments we’ve seen in forums to date surrounding this device as a sort of pariah for all BlackBerry devices, customers are not pleased that RIM is releasing yet another device. Comment-happy customers from around the web appear to want one device, not a thousand, and what the consensus appears to be is that BlackBerry is suffering not from a lack of choices for the consumer, but from lack of focus on one or a handful of devices. What do you think?

[via CrackBerry]

The same source appears to have tipped that RIM is looking for one whole heaping helping of cash, the prices quoted being one of the biggest reasons they’ve been unable to let loose up until now. Between $12 and $15 billion USD is what they want, that being right around $25 a share. This might be a bit confusing to those of you that know that RIM’s current market capitalization rests at $8.5 billion, considerably less than the nearly double this source is saying they want.

The person that’s spraying all this information around seems to have close ties with RIM’s Jim Balsillie, saying that amongst the many companies they’re going after for licensing, “Jim is going hard after Samsung.” Whether or not he’s actually going hard after any company to unload RIM unto is still up to debate. What do you think, ladies and gentlemen, should anyone buy up RIM?

Check out our timeline below to see the massacre that appears to be happening in the innards of RIM, especially surrounding BlackBerry and its not so pristine record over the past year or so.

[via BGR]

From what you’ve heard about this service in the past, there are only a few modifications for this final release. The first of these is just a clarification more than a modification really, that being a note on how when you’ve got a BBM Music Premium subscription, you can grab much more than 50 songs. When you start your music profile, you choose 50 songs. After this, you can add as much music as you like by adding friends and getting access to their music profile songs.

Have a look at the introduction video for this release here:

Then there’s quick note about cost: there’s a free Premium trial offer that’ll give you 2 months of use for free inside the USA and Canada, one month inside Australia, and you can get that by signing up for BBM Music today – that is, if you’ve not been part of the Beta of course. The Premium subscription will cost your $4.99 USD per month and, again, includes the free month offer if you’re a new signup.

Then if you’d like to download the app today (aka if you weren’t part of the Beta and/or want to upgrade to the full version now) you can get it at BlackBerry App World and mind the icon, you might mistake it for another well-known music service at first.

RIM has already detailed previously the cause of the outage, citing a hardware failure within its infrastructure. A failover backup system that was designed to handle such a “core switch failure” also failed to function as intended. This has caused a huge backlog of data with messages clogging up RIM’s servers, which is what’s now causing the service to go out in other parts of the world.

The company assures that the issue did not stem from a hacker attack or other security breach and that users will be able to recover all data and not lose any messages due to the outage. However, RIM did not specify when it might be able to restore the service and whether users would be compensated in any way for the loss of service.

[via AllThingsD]

The service first went down yesterday in the early morning, flooding Twitter and other social networks with plenty of complaints from angry users who could no longer access emails and BlackBerry Messenger on their devices. RIM has been apologetic from the start, but has so far only explained that they’re working on the problem.

The new statement from RIM details that the downtime was caused by a core switch failure, which was supposed to failover to a back-up switch. Apparently, neither one worked as previously tested and the outage is now going on two days. The issue caused a backlog of data that RIM is still clearing out and the company has not given a timeline as to when the service will resume.

The statement is included below:

“The messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested.

As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible.

We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed.”

[via Pocket-lint]

In the meantime, BlackBerry owners have nothing but RIM’s apologies to keep them comforted, rather than the regular buzz of emails dropping into their inbox and instant messaging conversations distracting them from the office or schoolroom. Text message remains functional at this stage, and carriers are blaming the Canadian company: both Bahrain operator Batelco and Vodafone Egypt have pointed the finger at RIM’s servers, The Telegraph reports.

The timing of the outage is less than fortunate, with Apple’s iOS 5 update fast approaching. That will bring iMessage to the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, the company’s new instant messaging service and a direct rival to BBM.

It’s not quite the same size of the other app icons. It could be that the icon is a placeholder for the real thing since it’s still in the dev stage at this point. The other page of the app shows the contact profile page and it has the features in the shot you expect for the BBM service.

There is a chance that these are not the real thing, but there have been rumors before that the BBM service would land on Android. The app is expected to come to market in 2012. Do you think these leaked screens are the real thing?

[via Android Community]