BlackBerry brings its popular instant messaging app, BBM, to Android 2.3 Gingerbread in an attempt to get the 20 percent Android users to its messaging platform.
BlackBerry is targeting the second most popular Android OS version after Jelly Bean, the 2.3 Gingerbread, which accounts for 20 percent of all Android devices in the market. The Canadian smartphone maker officially confirmed the rollout of its popular cross-platform instant messenger, BBM, for Gingerbread users. The latest move follows a previous announcement made in January to expand the BBM support to earlier Android versions, which was limited to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher.
In an official blog post by Jeff Gadway, the head of product and brand marketing for BBM, Tuesday, said that BlackBerry's BBM app coming to earlier Android version will not only benefit the low-end devices running Android 2.3, but will also bring more people to chat with for existing BBM users.
The updated BBM app for Android Gingerbread users will not support all the features that work with higher Android versions. Basic features such as "always on and always connected," delivery (D) and read (R) reports, sharing photos, files, documents, voice notes instantly with other contacts, emoticons, multi-person chats, and broadcast messages, will work on the Android 2.3 version. Other high-end features like voice-calling, location sharing and BBM channels are not supported on Gingerbread as per the app's description.
Support for additional features such as voice calls, location sharing and BBM channels on BBM for Android and iOS was announced earlier on Tuesday. The update, which brought the version to 2.0, was the most significant one as these features were long overdue on BlackBerry's list. Prior to this update, BlackBerry rolled out Find Friends feature for BBM users on Android and iOS to find friends using BBM app from within the device's contact list.
The updated BBM app for Gingerbread users is available for download from Google Play Store.
