Consumer version of BlackBerry Messenger will go dark on May 31

[Shawn Knight]

Recap: The proprietary mobile messaging service arrived in August 2005. Riding the wave of success that BlackBerry was experiencing at the time, BBM quickly became one of the top messaging applications around and influenced the development of several other messaging apps.

The consumer version of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) will be shutting down on May 31, 2019, after a nearly 14-year run, it was announced on Thursday.

BlackBerry’s fall from grace has been well documented but even still, the company had the wherewithal to bring BBM to other platforms including Android and iOS.

In 2016, BlackBerry struck up a partnership with Emtek to keep BBM going with new features. Despite those efforts, however, users have moved on to other platforms and Emtek has found it difficult to attract new users. As a result, it’s time to move on and sunset the consumer BBM service.

If you recently purchased stickers for BBM, you can nab a refund through Apple or Google.

In light of Emtek’s decision, BlackBerry announced that it is making its BBM Enterprise (BBMe) service available for individual use. The enterprise-grade messaging platform with end-to-end encryption will be available for free for the first year. After that, it’ll set you back just $2.49 every six months.

Second image courtesy Andrey Blumenfeld via Shutterstock

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79717-consumer-version-blackberry-messenger-go-dark-may-31.html

 

[psycros]

Blackberry is a case study on how to throw away a dominant market position. Its tragic, honestly..the company had so much going for it. It was the best mobile communications money could buy and BBM is STILL one of only a handful of truly secure messaging services. They had innovative designs like the Blackberry Storm, Torch and Style. But they never tried to complete on hardware and except for the Curve series they overcharged for everything. Their corporate culture was notoriously backward-thinking and they barely pretended to listen their customers. By the time they started paying attention it was years too late. I hope to score a KEY2 when the price drops just a little more..I suspect it may well be the last QWERTY smartphone we'll see for many years and maybe ever. I can only hope that phones become so advanced that morphing screens will eventually be able to grow pseudo-buttons.

 

[evolucion8]

Too sad seeing one of the most innovative technology companies this broke, shows that no matter how big and powerful you are, can't rest on your laurels forever. So instead of Research In Motion, more like Research In Stalling.

 

[Lionvibez]

Blackberry is a case study on how to throw away a dominant market position. Its tragic, honestly..the company had so much going for it. It was the best mobile communications money could buy and BBM is STILL one of only a handful of truly secure messaging services. They had innovative designs like the Blackberry Storm, Torch and Style. But they never tried to complete on hardware and except for the Curve series they overcharged for everything. Their corporate culture was notoriously backward-thinking and they barely pretended to listen their customers. By the time they started paying attention it was years too late. I hope to score a KEY2 when the price drops just a little more..I suspect it may well be the last QWERTY smartphone we'll see for many years and maybe ever. I can only hope that phones become so advanced that morphing screens will eventually be able to grow pseudo-buttons.

That can be said for many companies that are either a shell of their former selves or out of business. The list is far bigger than just blackberry.

 

[dogofwars]

Blackberry is a case study on how to throw away a dominant market position. Its tragic, honestly..the company had so much going for it. It was the best mobile communications money could buy and BBM is STILL one of only a handful of truly secure messaging services. They had innovative designs like the Blackberry Storm, Torch and Style. But they never tried to complete on hardware and except for the Curve series they overcharged for everything. Their corporate culture was notoriously backward-thinking and they barely pretended to listen their customers. By the time they started paying attention it was years too late. I hope to score a KEY2 when the price drops just a little more..I suspect it may well be the last QWERTY smartphone we'll see for many years and maybe ever. I can only hope that phones become so advanced that morphing screens will eventually be able to grow pseudo-buttons.

Truly secure messaging services? Not really when you use the same 3DES key for everybody except business with their own servers well once the key is out it is not anymore and since criminal use the service that make it defacto non secure since the company has to provide a way to law enforcement agency to intercept communication.

When BlackBerry/RIM provided the key to those agencies then no communication with the service was secure/private so that make it pointless.

Also another important point is that you can't trust organisation to secure such information, just as an example now we are stuck with some virus in the wild made by those same agencies so again that make their services pointless concerning security. So building a platform with only one key for everybody(consumers) is really a bad idea.

They did made secure phone though with the BB10 platform.