BlackBerry Messenger had a good run, but on Friday, May 31, the beloved instant messaging platform met its demise. That's right, BBM is no more as the service has officially shut down for Android, iOS, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry phones. The end of BBM was first announced in April by Emtek, the company that was managing the platform.
While BBM is going away for good, the enterprise version of the messenger, called BBM Enterprise, will continue to exist. In fact, BBMe, which offers similar functionality and encryption as BBM, will now be available for individual users. So, this is more of a handover, allowing customers who were still using BBM in 2019 to easily transition to BBMe.
However, BBMe will only be free for the first year after which it will cost Rs 199 for a six-month subscription. Emtek had warned BBM users back in April that they would lose all their conversations, photos, and other data after the service shuts down on May 31, giving them time to transfer important data to BBMe.
BlackBerry Messenger was launched back in 2005 as one of the first instant messaging platforms for mobile devices. The messaging platform allowed users to send messages over the internet using the BlackBerry PIN system. BBM messages were initially only possible between BlackBerry device, but in 2013 the company released BBM for Android and iOS.
Over the past decade, BBM's popularity began to fade as to platforms like Facebook-owned WhatsApp and WeChat. Near the end, BBM was largely used in Indonesia where it was installed on over 87 per cent of Android devices in the country.