Credit: https://blog.bbm.com/2019/04/18/time-to-say-goodbye-english-version/
BlackBerry Messenger—does anyone still use that app these days? Well, for those who still do, the owners are calling it quit with one of world’s most popular messaging apps back in the days. BBM consumer version according to the company’s official blog, will bet sunset come May 31.
The company said it had struggled to sustain its user base in the last couple of years, while adding new one remained a difficult task. The popularity and growth of major messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, and the likes didn’t help—users migrated and things never got any better for BBM.
“We are proud of what we have built to date,” the company said in a blog post. “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. Though we are sad to say goodbye, the time has come to sunset the BBM consumer service, and for us to move on. We are grateful for your support and wish to thank everyone, especially our users, partners, and employees, for being part of the BBM consumer service journey.”
A year and half after being launched on the Google Play Store BBM clocked 100 million installs. While that seemed a massive achievement for BlackBerry, the company had even more reason to be happy at the time as it announced that stickers were sent more than a billion times by users all over the world.
The BlackBerry Messenger app gradually became less-appealing to users as WhatsApp and the likes gained more prominence in the market. It was quite a successful messaging app in those days and a lot of users enjoyed it especially in terms of keeping in touch with loved ones. Perhaps, its success was what encouraged BlackBerry to make it an all-platform app—extending it to Android, iOS and Windows platform.
The success didn’t last long as BlackBerry in June 2015 pulled the BBM app from the Windows Phone Store, and users were no longer able to install it on Windows phones; the Android and iOS clients, however, remained accessible.
The decision to pull it out of the Windows Store coincided with WhatsApp announcement that it had hit 100 million calls on its platform in the same year. Apparently, this further affected the BBM app.
Telegram and WhatsApp built on the successes and global acceptability of their apps by adding more features to perpetually keep their users engaged. Both chat apps added end-to-end encryption technology to make communication between users more secure and private—thereby attracting more users to their services.
WhatsApp added a calling feature in April 2015 to allow users on its platform communicate with one another using data on the mobile phone. The voice calling feature became a huge success.
