It’s official: Blackberry Messenger for Android coming this summer — will you use it? [POLL]

RIM has long been rumored to be bringing Blackberry to rival operating systems. While the company denied it at every turn, we figured they’d want to start branching out and making waves on other platforms in the event that the failing Blackberry hardware business goes the way of the dodo.

While Blackberry isn’t completely dead yet, the company doesn’t want to waste any time in planting some roots on Android (and, in turn, iOS). It has officially announced that Blackberry Messenger — otherwise affectionately known as BBM — will be launching for the top mobile platforms this summer.

The app will be fully featured, with key ingredients like group messaging and screen sharing all coming to the rival platforms. According to The Verge, CEO Thorsten Heins believes Blackberry Messenger is ready to expand to other platforms because he believes Blackberry 10 is enough to win customers over on its own merit. We are calling for an early helping of “BS” on that one, but that’s the company line.

The service is expected to launch this summer, and will be free for anyone to download. While other group messaging platforms are gaining recognition on Android and Google planning to launch its own refined communication service sometime soon you may wonder whether or not there is a need for Blackberry Messenger anymore.

I personally still have a lot of friends who would like to use it, but have since migrated to options that are currently present on all platforms. With a solid enough app and key security and collaboration features Blackberry Messenger could once again become the go-to messaging platform even if you weren’t a Blackberry fan back in the golden days. We’ll have to await more information from RIM, but just be glad that it’s on its way soon.

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