BBM has appeared on the Windows Phone Store in private beta form

A couple of months ago, it was announced that BBM would finally be making its way onto Windows Phone. It was later revealed that the app was scheduled for a release in July, and it looks like that it will be able to meet that date. The app has recently made its way onto the Windows Phone Store but apparently as a private beta, meaning that while we can see the listing, we are unable to download it. What does this mean? Well hopefully what this means is that the app is currently undergoing testing and that it should be able to meet its original deadline of a July release. Of course we expect that this could be subject to change, depending on whether any breaking bugs are discovered in the app ahead of its release, but assuming all goes well, hopefully we will hear something from BlackBerry soon.

BlackBerry may be the struggling for relevancy in 2014, but they still have a couple of valuable properties, including their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, which is now on iOS and Android. Earlier this year, BlackBerry announced that a version for Windows Phone was also on the way, and July was last reported as the due date. With that introduction, it should not be surprising to find the private beta of the app hiding out on the Store under the BlackBerry Limited publishing name. However, like all good things, you cannot download it yet. Private beta means you have to be on the tester list, and that involves using your Microsoft Account ID. As a result, you can look at the app on the Store, but you can not download. BBM for Windows Phone can bring more parity between iOS and Android when released. As to how the app looks, we still don’t know. Windows Phone Central reported earlier that Modern UI elements would be present, while preserving the familiar BBM design: “…BBM going forward will strive to maintain a healthy balance between BBM maintaining its own identity while still honoring the best practices of platform’s guidelines. In other words, BBM users moving between platforms should recognize and know how to use BBM in an instance, while at the same time the app should still look and feel like the best native apps on the platform. For Windows Phone, expect BBM to feature its own live tile and panoramas.”