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

By: Techspot