BBM: End Of The Road For BlackBerry Messenger

The consumer version of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) was switched off on Friday, marking the end for the once hugely popular messaging platform.

The current owner of BBM, Indonesian firm Emtek, had revealed in April it would switch off the consumer version of the platform because of a lack of users.

BlackBerry has retained the enterprise version of the platform (called BBMe), and the good news is that BBM Enterprise has been opened to non-enterprise people, but they have to pay a $2.50 subscription fee for every six months.

BBM closure

BBM had been one of the pillars of BlackBerry (then called Research in Motion) after the Canadian company first introduced BlackBerry Messenger (later BBM) in 2005.

The encrypted instant messaging service proved to be an instant hit, despite the fact that BlackBerry kept BBM firmly anchored on its BlackBerry handsets until 2013.

BBM was finally released onto iOS and Android devices in 2013, and even Windows Phone got its own BBM app in 2014.

This briefly increased its popularity, despite the waning fortunes of Blackberry in the smartphone market.

Yet the following couple of years were not kind to BBM, and it rapidly got overtaken by the likes of WhatsApp and other messaging platforms.

In 2016 BlackBerry took the decision to farm out the consumer version of BBM to Indonesian firm Emtek.

Emtek took the decision this year to “sunset” BBM, after it admitted that “in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on.”

BlackBerry meanwhile has opened up its enterprise version (BBMe) to everyone.

The platform will be available for both Android and iOS users, but there is a $2.50 subscription fee for every six months.

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