Last week Emtek decided to end its service of BBM for consumers on May 31, 2019 and BlackBerry, with a huge amount of spin, opened up BBM Enterprise (BBMe), its enterprise-grade end-to-end encrypted messaging platform, for consumer and individual use – for a fee.
Initially, it was made available to Android users but with today’s update of BBM Enterprise for iOS, individual subscriptions for personal use of BBM Enterprise is now available to iOS users. With an individual subscription, users can send secure, encrypted messages with other BBM Enterprise customers.
Users can now pin important chats to make them easier to find. Pinned chats are displayed at the top of your chat list.
You can now mention a participant in a group chat. If you are mentioned in a chat, the message is displayed in a yellow message bubble. There are still a few issues with mentions. On both iOS and Android devices, when a user in a group chat types @ to mention a participant, the participants are not displayed in alphabetical order.
In addition, mentions created on Android devices are not displayed correctly on iOS devices. When an iOS user receives a mention sent from an Android device, the mention symbol (@) is not displayed in the chat list, the audio alert for mentions does not override the settings in a muted group chat, and tapping on the mentions banner does not allow users to search for mentions in a chat.
Only participants that are administrators of a group chat can edit the subject.
Finally, when a user leaves a group chat and rejoins, the number of chat members is now properly updated on the user’s device,
BBMe is available for free for the first year. After the first year, a 6-month subscription will be available for USD $2.49.
BBMe can be downloaded on any device that uses Android, iOS, Windows or MAC operating systems. The sender and recipient each have unique public/private encryption and signing keys. These keys are generated on the device by a FIPS 140-2 certified cryptographic library and are not controlled by BlackBerry.
Each message uses a new symmetric key for message encryption. Additionally, TLS encryption between the device and BlackBerry’s infrastructure protects BBMe messages from eavesdropping or manipulation.
From a feature perspective, BBMe users can conduct group chats, voice and video calls, as well as edit, retract, or set an expiration time on a single message. They’ll also know when a message is received and read, and have the ability to share files, voice notes, and their location. BBMe for individual use can be used on up to five devices simultaneously.
BBMe users can allow users to communicate and stay connected, regardless of which device they have, whether it be iOS, Android, macOS, or Windows. Messages are synchronised across all active devices.
Emtek said that “users have moved on to other platforms” and that it was difficult to get new users to join the service, so it wil be interesting to see if the few existing BBM consumer users switch to BBMe or switch to another messaging service entirely.
