In light of Emtek’s decision to end its service of BBM for consumers on May 31, 2019, BlackBerry is making BBM Enterprise (BBMe), its enterprise-grade end-to-end encrypted messaging platform, available for consumer and individual use – for a fee.
With today’s update of BBMe for Android, users can now set up individual subscriptions for personal use of BBM Enterprise from their Android or iOS devices. 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.
Only participants that are administrators of a group chat can edit the subject.
Starting today, users can download BBMe from Android’s Google Play store and the Apple App Store. BBMe will be available for free for the first year. After the first year, a 6-month subscription will be available for USD $2.49.
“While we respect Emtek’s decision, we’re disappointed the platform did not thrive and grow as expected,” said Mark Wilson, Chief Marketing Officer, BlackBerry.
“After much consideration, we decided that BBM’s loyal users should continue to have a secure messaging platform that they can trust.”
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.
“Since 2016 we have tried our best to compete in this market and launch many new features and content that we had hoped would grow the BBM user base,” they explain.
“Despite all of our efforts, we found that the network effect of the market leaders is getting stronger and we have been squeezed out of user preferences.”
