Goodbye BlackBerry Messenger: BBM officially shutting down on May 31

In what could be sad news for loyal BlackBerry fans and users worldwide, the company’s iconic messaging service BBM aka BlackBerry Messenger is officially shutting down next month. BBM will shut down on May 31, Emtek said in its official blog post.

“We are proud of what we have built to date. 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,” BBM said.

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BlackBerry Messenger made its debut back in 2005. That was the time when Facebook and Orkut were fairly new, and so was the concept of instant messaging services, especially on mobile devices. Having played a significant role in shaping up the smartphone industry, BlackBerry quickly emerged as the first choice among the working class. As a result, BBM was quite popular among users. Then came Android, which completely revolutionised the mobile app industry. And by the time Android started to dominate smartphone space, WhatsApp and other popular social media services were equally dominating chat-based communications space.

In 2016, Indonesia-based Emtek Group acquired the licensing rights for BBM, as part of the six-year, $207 million deal. In 2017, BBM moved its servers moved from Canada to Asia.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry said that Emtek's decision to shut down BBM was made out of respect for loyal BBM users and was not a contractual obligation.

"While we respect Emtek's decision, we're disappointed the platform did not thrive and grow as expected. After much consideration, we decided that BBM's loyal users should continue to have a secure messaging platform that they can trust," BlackBerry Chief Marketing Officer Mark Wilson said.

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BlackBerry said it will make enterprise-focused BBMe available for individuals. You can download it from Play store from Thursday and App Store soon. BBMe is protected with end-to-end encryption standard. Blackberry said that BBMe will be available for free for the first year and after that user will be charged $2.49 for a six-month subscription. According to reports, BBM had 190 million users worldwide in 2015.

(With agency inputs)