BlackBerry announced on Wednesday the launch dates for BBM for Android and BBM for iOS: September 21 and September 22, respectively. Previously an exclusive to BlackBerry smartphones, BBM will be available as a free download in Google Play and Apple’s App Store this weekend. The timing here is of course pitiful. When Android and iOS became the dominant forces in mobile, BlackBerry had two choices: maintain BBM as an exclusive and find another killer feature for its smartphones, or bring BBM over to its two competing platforms and hope it will convince some users to switch back. Neither is a particularly great choice, but if you’re going to go with the latter, you have to do it quickly. At this point in time, there are tons of BBM alternatives on all the mobile platforms, from Facebook Messenger to WeChat, and the big ones are all more popular than BlackBerry’s offering.