Today the plug on BlackBerry Messenger has been pulled. The company announced last month that it would shut down the consumer service, which has been steadily losing users and failing to attract new ones. As a consolation for diehard fans, BlackBerry opened BBM Enterprise, its enterprise-grade encrypted Messenger (BBMe), for personal use. That’s available on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac.
Three years ago, the company set out to reinvigorate BBM consumer service, but those efforts fell flat. “We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date,” BlackBerry wrote on its blog. “The technology industry however, is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on.”
The company faced plenty of competition, and at various points it sued Twitter, Facebook and Snap over patent infringement. In 2017, the company surprised many by adding Uber to the BBM app. Despite those efforts, the platform’s popularity continued to dwindle. Time will tell if BlackBerry can convert BBM users into BBMe fans.
