BlackBerry Messenger for Android rollout frozen: No launch this week as fiasco continues

BlackBerry has cancelled plans to launch its BlackBerry Messenger application for Android amidst mounting delays on the rollout.

The company initially announced that the Android version of the app was supposed to be launched last Saturday, with an iPhone version released on Sunday.

However, after beginning the launch of the iPhone version in selected companies on Saturday, the company abruptly stopped the rollout.

“Pausing #BBM4All rollout to fix issues caused by unreleased BBM for Android app” the company tweeted.

The launch came less than a day after the company reported nearly $US1 billion in quarterly losses, weak handset sales and cuts to 40% of its global workforce.

In a statement, the executive vice president of BBM, Andrew Bocking, blamed the delays on an unofficial version of the app leaking through file sharing sites.

“Last week, an unreleased, older version of the BBM for Android app was posted on numerous file sharing sites … This older version resulted in volumes of data traffic orders of magnitude higher than normal for each active user and impacted the system in abnormal ways,” Bocking said.

“We attempted to address the problems caused by the unreleased version throughout the day on Saturday, but as active users of the unreleased app neared a million – and accelerated – it became clear that the only way to address the issue was to pause the rollout for both Android and iPhone.

Bocking has also warned consumers that the full release of the app is unlikely to go ahead this week.

“The team is now focused on adjusting the system to completely block this unreleased version of the Android app when we go live with the official BBM for Android app…. This will take some time and I do not anticipate launching this week.”