Samsung will roll out its ChatOn Blackberry Messenger/iMessage competitor on all major platforms

Samsung is getting into the proprietary messaging format game with a new product called ChatOn it announced today.  The service will roll out on its Bada, Android and even feature phones and will extend to competing platforms like Blackberry and iOS.  The service will run over IP and allow users to send text, images, and hand-written notes, as well as chat in groups and share video clips.

The new service, called ChatON, will be available from October and preinstalled in Samsung’s feature phones as well as smartphones running on its own bada operating system and Google’s Android software, it said.

Samsung’s partner Google has a similar Talk/Voice feature already installed on Android devices so it isn’t immediately clear which will take precedence.  All of these services are collectively eating at the SMS revenue that carriers have been squeezing out of their customers for a decade.  Apple’s iMessage is set to go live with the general release of iOS 5, also likely in October.

Speaking of the iOS maker, Apple was able to successfully block Samsung from releasing it’s ‘modified’ Australian Galaxy Tab in Australia it was reported this evening…

Samsung had agreed at an Aug. 2 hearing to delay the sales of the 10.1 tablet to Aug. 31, after Apple claimed the device infringed 10 of its patents, including the “look and feel” of the iPad.

Samsung said the claim was based on a U.S. model and the Australian version was different. The company last week provided Apple’s legal team with three samples of the 10.1 version intended to be sold in Australia, Apple lawyer Steven Burley told the judge today.

“The new model has some reduced functionality,” Burley said. It still infringes at least two of Apple’s patents, he said, and the company will pursue its request for an injunction on the sales until a trial on the patent infringement can be held.

“It doesn’t have reduced functionality,” Catterns responded, saying Burley’s comment sounded like an Apple advertisement. “It has different features.”

A hearing on Apple’s request for the injunction was scheduled for the week of Sept. 26 and it will likely take two days, Bennett said.

The agreement to halt advertising and sale of the 10.1 tablet doesn’t affect any other Samsung tablet or smartphone available in Australia, or other countries, the company said following the Aug. 2 hearing.