BBM for iOS and Android unlikely to be released this week

Even as BlackBerry announced that it has signed a letter of intent with a group led by Fairfax Financial in a bid to go private, the company also updated users about the global rollout of BlackBerry Messenger for iOS and Android. The company has said that it is still trying to address issues that cropped up because of the unreleased version of BBM for Android, and does not expect to continue with the app release this week.

In a blog post announcing the further delay in the release of BBM for Android and iOS, Andrew Bocking, the Head of BBM at BlackBerry, said that despite spending the whole of Saturday trying to address issues caused by the older, unreleased version of the app that leaked for Android, it doesn’t look like the process will be done with any time soon.

Not any time soon

Bocking reminded users that the global rollout came to a halt midway over the weekend when issues started coming up thanks to an older unreleased version of BBM for Android being leaked on multiple file sharing websites. “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. 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.

While the team is still working on adjusting the system to completely block the unreleased version of the app, it is also making sure it is capable of handling such scenarios in the future. “While this may sound like a simple task – it’s not,” Bocking wrote. This task will take a while longer than expected and Bocking does not expect the application to officially launch this week.

Another factor that could be in play here is that BlackBerry, a month after officially opening itself to the idea of a buyout, has signed a letter of intent with a consortium led by Fairfax Financial’s Prem Watsa. The deal which is subject to due diligence may be sealed before November 4, if it does go through.