In what is hardly a surprise, BlackBerry has informed members of their Beta Community that the program will be closing next week.
Since TCL announced they would no longer produce BlackBerry-branded smartphones, bit by bit BlackBerry have been winding down anything to do with their phones, and now it’s the turn of the beta community.
The BlackBerry Beta Team stated in an email to beta users:
We’re writing today to share that we will be closing this beta community next week. We would like to thank everyone who spent time with us here over the last 2 years — your feedback made a big difference in our releases and helped to shape the quality and features of our current suite.Â
The company does say that they will still be releasing beta release of apps via the normal Google Play beta system.
The BlackBerry apps featured in this beta program will continue to have beta releases in Google Play! You can choose to Join or Leave beta testing for individual apps by clicking the appropriate link on an app’s page in the Google Play app. We’ll continue to receive and monitor all feedback submitted through the ‘Private Feedback to Developer’ section in the Google Play app (on each app’s page). You can also send feedback to our published support address, bbappsupport@blackberry.com.Â
How long this continues is a matter of conjecture though, as if the apps aren’t making any real money for BlackBerry, we are sure to seem them disappear one by one.
