BB10 reportedly not getting Instagram anytime soon

BlackBerry 10 will not be getting a native Instagram app anytime soon, if a report by AllThingsD is to be believed. A source apparently told AllThingsD: "There will be no [native] Instagram for BB10 for now. Frankly, I’m not sure there will ever be."

Considering the popularity of the photo-sharing service, the non-availability of a native app on the BB10 platform will not go unnoticed.

When BlackBerry 10 was first launched, The Verge reported that Instagram had a version ready for BB10, but the app probably ran on the custom Android runtime BlackBerry has created for Android apps to be easily ported or accessed on their new devices.

However, the ported version of the app will not offer the same experience as a native app. We recently got our hands on a BB10 handset and found that Android ports don't work as well as native apps. There are issues with performance and most apps' interfaces aren't optimised to the BB10 UI. We have no doubt apps developed on BlackBerry's own SDK will work a lot better than ported apps.

No native app on BB10, for now at least

BB10 was accompanied by a whopping 70,000 apps when it was launched. On the flipside, BlackBerry has failed to include many apps that may not have been smartphone staples a couple of years ago, but will be sorely missed in 2013. A YouTube app would have been a great addition, but BlackBerry preferred to point out that users can view videos on the browser. Multimedia apps like Netflix and Hulu, which are commonplace nowadays, have not been announced for the platform either.

This is the full list of the major apps BlackBerry announced at the event: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, WhatsApp, Amazon Kindle, New York Times, The Economist, MLB At Bat, ESPN Scorecenter, CBS Sports, PGA Tour, NHL Gamecenter, SportsTracker, ATP, UFC Cisco Webex, Bloomberg, Evernote, SAP, Citrix, Soundhound, The Weather Channel, BBC Top Gear, eMusic, Slacker, Songza, TuneIn Radio, Paper Camera, Box, DropBox, ooVoo, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Dictionary.com, Flixster, and Stubhub.

In the Business and Productivity category, the company announced the availability of apps like Bloomberg, BMC Service Desk & Remedy, Box, Cisco WebEx Meetings, Citrix Podio, CNBC, Dictionary.com, Emirates NBD, Harmon.ie, IBM Notes Traveler, ING DIRECT Canada, Nat West, RBC, RBS, SAP, TD Bank Group and Thomson Reuters.

Under the Lifestyle segment, AccuWeather, Air Canada, Air France, DStv Mobile, Dr. Oetker Rezeptideen, Easyjet, FlightAware, Flixster, KLM, Manulife Financial, President’s Choice Recipe Box, SkyScanner, Spotcast, StubHub, The Weather Channel, The Weather Network, United Airlines, Wikitude, WisePilot, Yellow Pages Group and Zara will have apps for BlackBerry 10.

Multimedia apps such as Absolute Radio, Al Jazeera, Allociné, Astral Radio, Top Gear, BubblePix, Channel 4, Deezer, E! Online, eMusic, Europe 1, Kiss Kube, MTV Italia and Nobex Radio will be seen alongside the likes of NOS, N-TV Nachrichten, Occipital 360 Panorama, OxygenLive, Pacemaker, PaperCamera, Rdio, Shahid.net, SiriusXM, Slacker, Songza, SoundHound, TuneIn, and Volu.me.