It’s unlikely that this will help BlackBerry come out of its struggles, but the Canada-based smartphone maker says it will be bringing its BBM messaging service to Apple’s iPad and iPod touch later today. Don’t be surprised, though, if the launch gets delayed (based on BlackBerry’s past iOS launch efforts). BBM for iPhone arrived late last month for free. It seems likely that the app will be a Universal download, and we’ll update when it’s out. The iPhone-only launched garnered 5 million downloads in 8 hours.

Update: The app is out… though BBM for iPad is (unsurprisingly?) just the iPhone app working stretched. Although the stretched iPhone app has always been available for cellular iPads, today’s update brings the app to wi-fi only models of the iPad and iPods.