BBM Private Beta on Android - Is a Full Version About to be Released?

During BlackBerry’s Live event earlier this year in May, CEO Thorsten Heins announced that BlackBerry would be supporting both Android (Ice Cream Sandwich version and up) and iOS (6 or higher) platforms for its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Not only would it be available, it would also be free.

During the keynote address, Heins mentioned that BBM has more than 60 million users and they are sending out over 10 billion messages every day. Imagine what the numbers would look like if this was also taking place on the Android and iOS platforms.

According to a BlackBerry spokesman, “BlackBerry has begun internal testing of BBM on Android and iOS devices. We invited our employees to nominate friends and family to participate in a limited Android beta. Those slots are now full.” I guess that means that general public testing is out of the question.

An interesting question that bringing BlackBerry’s most popular and proprietary app to a cross-platform scenario brings to mind is, how will this affect BlackBerry 10 devices? If one of the key reasons that someone is using a Z10 or Q10 is BBM and it becomes fully available on another platform, will that affect the sale of these devices?

Not much is being said about this, other that it is currently being beta tested. During BlackBerry Live, Heins did promise that the cross-platform version would be available by the end of summer. So far, BlackBerry seems to be on the right road.

It never surprises me anymore to hear that something is being tested or discussed behind closed doors only to see an image of it a day or two later. Guess what? Seems that one of the beta testers let an image leak out.

It will be interesting to see if this is a bold move on BlackBerry’s part to move more into the service-oriented company with less focus on just devices such as the Z10 and Q10. Back in May, BlackBerry updated its Enterprise Instant Messaging to version 3.0.

This is a free upgrade. The new version will enable customers with BlackBerry 10 smartphones to keep in touch through Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Communication Server or IBM Lotus Sametime securely. You can see that BlackBerry is making an effort to become more available.

As I said, it will be interesting to see how this move fits into BlackBerry’s big plans.