BlackBerry pushes BBM beta invites
Back in May, TUAW reported that BlackBerry Messenger would be arriving for iOS by the end of the summer. In June, T-Mobile UK accidentally tweeted that BBM would arrive on June 27, but that turned out to be a false alarm. Finally, it appears that with the launch window for the app rapidly shrinking, BlackBerry is finally beginning to send out beta invitations for BBM.
Well, at least they're sending them out for a few Android users who are running 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and later. There's still no word on whether any iOS beta users have been contacted about the beta -- if you happen to be one of those beta candidates, please let TUAW know via the "Tip Us" button in the upper-right corner of this page.
As blogger Chris Velazco at our sister site TechCrunch notes,
It's still a little confusing to me that BlackBerry is taking this approach in the first place. I mean, for a long while there, BlackBerrys were the smartphones to own and at least part of its appeal hinged on its curiously hardy (well, mostly hardy) messaging system. Of course, making the leap to alternative platforms presents its own set of issues, not least of which is the fact that iOS and Android are already saturated with free or freemium messaging apps.
Whether bringing BBM to iOS and Android can revive the fortunes of the company from Waterloo, Ontario is something that only time will tell.
