BlackBerry Ltd , is set to scrap one of its greatest features in the enterprise space. The beginning of next year will see the end of the company’s BBM Meetings service. The Canadian tech firm has confirmed in a blog post that BBM Meetings will be terminated on the 10th of February next year. Its disposal comes just a year after BlackBerry launched the service.
BlackBerry scraps BBM Meetings
BBM Meetings was launched in the latter part of 2014. It gave business inclined users the chance to switch from other enterprise-based meeting products. An example of a prominent rival would be WebEx from Cisco. This meeting service ran across Windows, BlackBerry, iOS, and Android.
But BBM Messenger had a lot of perks over its rivals. It was poised to own the enterprise communications space with the right direction. It is instilled with BlackBerry’s top notch security features. This aspect of the service can be appreciated by any business entity. It also made conference calls simpler and safer. Further, BBM Messenger made use of the HD video and voice call features that were already present on BlackBerry handsets. This cut out a number of setup hassles, another benefit over rival services.
BBM Meetings was also cheaper than many of its rivals. The service cost $12.50 per month for hosts fewer than 25 members. All this makes the announcement of BBM Messenger’s coming end all the more surprising. BlackBerry Ltd gave no reason for why it is disposing of the product. The company only gave notice of its termination and offered an alternative. As per the firm’s suggestion, BBM Meetings fans can switch to Zoom. It is a similar rival service that focuses solely on web meetings.
It is obvious that BlackBerry has an interest in building a name for itself in the software and security space. March 2016 should have the firm gain $500 million in software income, if all goes according to the firm’s aims.
BlackBerry will grow its software division
As hardware sales continue to struggle, BlackBerry will make more acquisitions in order to grow its software business. It appears, however, that some of the software it grows at home just isn’t good enough.
“We’re still a $3 billion company and have $3 billion in cash,” assures CEO John Chen. “We’re pouring most of that into research and development.”
The last 20 months alone has seen the Waterloo-based firm make 5 major company buys. In a smart move, BlackBerry bought Good Technology earlier this year for $425 million. The acquisition set the firm’s software security to new heights. It also allowed the firm to gain a new set of customers and rid itself of a major rival in a single swipe.
The company also adopted Alphabet’s Android operating system this year. The OS was installed in the firm’s Priv smartphone, the first of a number of Android devices to come from BlackBerry Ltd . That means it’s likely that BB10 will soon join BBM Meetings among the firm’s software products that just didn’t find a market.
Though Chen holds hope that the Priv will produce a profit, the CEO has admitted that he will do away with the firm’s smartphone arm if the device fails to make a good profit.
“We lost our number position a number of years ago in 2007. Everybody had a BlackBerry back then,” Chen reminisced. “If we don’t get a good hardware business going, we will more consider the software side.”
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