Research In Motion, the Canadian company behind the popular BlackBerry smartphone, has blocked users from downloading the Kik app on its App World.
The decision was apparently made because of a number of “issues and customer concerns regarding the Kik app and service”.
“Following discussions with Kik, the app was removed from BlackBerry App World on November 12. Upon further investigation, RIM concluded that Kik had breached contractual obligations. Based on the broad scope and seriousness of the issues and concerns, RIM terminated its agreements with Kik and withdrew RIM’s support for Kik’s service.”
Kik said in a blog post that the messaging app has a year of development behind it, and also said it had worked with “RIM at every step”.
App developers have labelled the incident as extremely strange, with Kik even failing to come up with an explanation.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
