I'm speculating another issue at hand (not that this one caused issues for BBM itself) that a substantial number of users downloaded fake BBM apps that were made to look like from "BBM Inc" or "BlackBerry Inc" (BB itself is registered in Google Play store as "BlackBerry Limited").

These apps had full access permissions to Phone Logs, SD Card, and Network Communications. Users were forced to provide a rating for the apps before the app "allowed" them to login and then crashed.

A related article here: http://trak.in/tags/business/2013/09/21/fake-bbm-apps-fools-...