The Blackberry Playbook has been out for almost 2 years now. Despite this, many owners are still waiting to get a taste of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) on the device. Right now, if you own a Blackberry smartphone and a Playbook, you can download Blackberry Bridge. This allows you to pair your tablet and smartphone as well as use BBM from your tablet.

However, a native BBM app is yet to be released for the tablet. For those of you still waiting, BBOTA.cn recently spotted screenshots of what looks to be a native BBM app for the Playbook. Take a look:

Blackberry is not scheduled to make any announcements until their January 30th Blackberry 10 launch. If BBM for Playbook isn’t released by then, it might be time to give up.

Stay tuned at Mobile Magazine for updates on Blackberry 10 and a possible BBM for Playbook app in the coming weeks or month.

Do you have a Blackberry Playbook? Have you been waiting for a native BBM app? Let us know in the comments below.

[ Source ]

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Blackberry has announced new updates for several apps such as Facebook and Twitter that will now include BlackBerrry Messenger connectivity. This new functionality means that users can now automatically share their Facebook and Twitter updates with BBM friends, right within the apps. Outside of Facebook and Twitter, there is also a new version of BlackBerry Travel, BBM Music, and Blackberry App World that will include BBM integration in the mix.

Over 800 Blackberry apps already has this functionality, and its clear that RIM is going to continue to leverage the technology on its platform. The updates are expected to roll out over the next ten days.

The new BlackBerrry App World update includes the ability to easily share their downloads via BBM and also is adding NFC for phones with Blackberry tagging abilities, giving Blackberry users even more ways to share their apps with one another.

RIM’s Blackberry phones (and tablet) have certainly seen a decline in popularity over the last couple of years, but it is clear that they haven’t given up just yet. Will the continued additions of BBM into apps make any real difference in regaining popularity or helping slow down this decline? What do you think?

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To be fair, the “upgrade was free and in many cases automatic.” I imagine a reasonably sizable percentage of PlayBook owners are a little more tech-savvy, picking up the PlayBook in the first place because of the great value it provided at the significantly reduced price point of $199 and up. And they all knew that OS 2.0 was on the way, bringing with it native email, contacts and calendar functionality. BlackBerry Messenger is still notably missing. The good news is that the Android app player is part of the picture now, opening the door for all kinds of additional apps for the tablet.

According to Chitika, these early adoption rates for the new OS will lead to about 75% of PlayBooks rocking OS 2.0 in three weeks. This assumes a 50% decay rate over time.

The post Nearly Half of Blackberry Playbook Owners Have Upgraded to OS 2.0 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Research in Motion has clearly seen some brighter days, but BlackBerry is pushing ahead with some new updates. Today, BlackBerry Messenger 6 was officially released and it comes with at least one novel feature that you might like. With BBM6, you can share news and updates from other apps as your BBM status.

Normally, your status is just a snippet of text. With the next BBM, you can connect your status to your most recent Foursquare check-in, for instance. This way, any of your BBM buddies can immediately know where you are without a) sending you a message to find out, or b) switching to the Foursquare app to look you up.

Foursquare isn’t the only app working with this kind of functionality, but aside from the Huffington Post and Poynt, not too many other major services have signed on. I’d imagine that Facebook and Twitter would be natural fits, too, but RIM will have to chat up those folks to see what kind of integration they’d want to have. You can see the full list of supported apps on the BB blog. The good thing is that if one of your BBM buddies shares a status with one of these apps and you don’t have it, you can download the necessary app directly from within the BBM 6 interface.

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It looks like a leak of BBM 6.0 has made its way onto the web and it comes with a few colorful new features that your current BlackBerry Messenger may not have. One of the most notable changes is the inclusion of color-coding your contacts.

You can already organize your contacts a variety of different ways, but the “at a glance” color coding could come in handy when you’re in a rush. The icons toward the bottom are the fun colored ones too, so I guess they want to have a little more personality this time around.

You can check out the screenshots for a better idea of what to expect, but the expectation is that BBM 6.0 will roll out as part of BB OS 6.1. Although you can grab the unauthorized version of the former now, it’s recommended that you don’t lest you want to deal with some unnecessary headaches.

Now the question remains, how will BBM look like RIM decides to port it over to other platforms? Will other smartphones get this color-coding too?

[Read]

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There’s word that BlackBerry Messenger will soon be ported over to Google Android and Apple iOS. The way that it works, this would mean not only access to a new BBM app on the other platforms, but also access to the trusted RIM servers and service. Why would they do this? Well, it could become a secondary revenue source. So what would be left for RIM?

While it is quite possible that BBM for Android and iOS will be offered for free, it’s also possible that RIM thinks it can charge a one-time fee or even monthly subscription fees to these non-Berry users to use the BB service by proxy. Then again, these same users can keep doing almost the same thing for free with WhatsApp and Kik.

Personally, I’m still not convinced in the value of BlackBerry Messenger when there are so many other cross platform messaging clients that are free. Couldn’t you do the same thing with Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, and any number of other IM protocols? Won’t RIM lose some of its Berry loyal by offering BBM outside the platform? They do have a secure hold on the corporate front, so allowing more devices to keep the RIM quality of service could still be rather appealing.

[via BGR]

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