BlackBerry says it submitted BBM to App Store two weeks ago

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The official BlackBerry Messenger app for iPhone is on the way, according to the Canadian-based company. Alex Kinsella, a Senior Manager who is working on the software, tweeted out this afternoon that BBM for iPhone has been submitted to the App Store.

In fact, Kinsella says his team submitted the app for review two weeks ago, meaning it’s basically up to Apple now when we’ll see it made available. And it’ll be interesting to see what happens here, as the company has a history of blocking big releases… 

Here’s the tweet (via 9to5Mac):

The news comes roughly—what a coincidence—two weeks after a user manual for the iOS version of BlackBerry Messenger surfaced online. At the time, it was thought this was an accidental leak, but now it sounds more like it coincided with the app’s submission.

Here’s an excerpt from the guide:

“With BBM, you can chat and share in real-time with your BBM contacts and groups. For example, you can share pictures, see when someone has read your message or is typing a reply, and update your BBM status or picture. Share your news with multiple people using multiperson chats and group chats.

With BBM Groups, you can plan events, track to-do lists, share pictures, and chat with up to 30 people at the same time without needing to add them all as BBM contacts.”

From what we can glean from previous reports, it sounds like BBM for iPhone is going to be very similar to the BlackBerry version, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it missing a few features. This goes for the Android version as well, which is also on the way.

The launch of BBM on multiple platforms comes at an interesting time for BlackBerry. The company is struggling so much to sell devices right now that it has been considering, over the past year, to sell itself to a larger corporation in order to stay bankruptcy.

Obviously, we’ll let you know as soon as BBM is available for download.

Are you excited for its release, or is BlackBerry Messenger irrelevant at this point?