Update
To clarify, what you know as BBM in the consumer world today is made by Emtek (licenced by BlackBerry) and this is being killed off. BlackBerry will now offer the enterprise version (BBMe) to consumers.
The announcement below does not relate to BBM Enterprise which is a messaging platform that does not monetize data, won’t ask for a phone number, suggest contacts to users, nor does it desire to know where users are messaging from, or what is being shared.
It’s official, BBM is dead. The service is shutting down on the 31st of May this year.
Most of us have long moved on from BlackBerry phones, however, like Lumias, there are still die-hards who love the platform from Kyle Sandilands (KISS FM 106.5 Sydney) and those who love
Back in 2016, BBM was licenced as a consumer product, which was quite a diversion for the strong enterprise brand, however that experiment included adding BBMoki, stickers etc, has clearly failed.
Emtek (makers of BBM consumer) say in their goodbye post, that 3 years ago, they set out to reinvigorate BBM consumer service, clearly, that didn’t work. The instant messaging application evolved into a cross-platform service where users can not only chat and share life experiences but also consume content and use payment services.
BBM staff poured our hearts into making that a reality, and are proud of what they built.
Emtek went on to say that the technology industry is very fluid, and in spite of substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms (read: IOS and Android), while attracting new users proved difficult.
Sunsetting a service is always hard but is symptomatic of a company that was slow to react to the dramatic disruption to the mobile market from Apple, Samsung and others.
Thanks to Ahmad Ki for the tip and here’s a copy of the email sent to users announcing the end of the service.
For those looking for more information around what happens to your data, you should check out the BBM FAQ page.
