Canadian company BlackBerry has announced that it will shutting down some ancillary services including the BlackBerry World app store on Dec. 31, 2019, giving BlackBerry Operating System (BBOS) users a little over two years of continued support.
According to a blog post on Inside BlackBerry, the company will also close down other amenities such as the BlackBerry Travel site and the Playbook video calling service which will shut down on February and March 2018 respectively.
Nonetheless, the company assured that customers who upgrade to the more recent BlackBerry KeyOne and BlackBerry Motion will have immediate access to the services offered in the Google Play store without compromising security or the desire for a physical keyboard the older BlackBerry smartphones had to offer. Details on the trade-up program offering a "significant discount and incentive to upgrade," will soon be posted on their website.
Aside from the promise of two more BBOS service and network access years, BlackBerry has not committed to anything beyond that point, indicating that the many businesses could find themselves neglected after 2019.
The company initially decided to ditch the BBOS in 2015, moving instead to the Android software from Google. However, the decision seemingly did not work out in their favor as the company announced in 2016 that it would discontinue manufacturing its own smartphones, outsourcing thesis duties to Chinese multinational electronics company TCL.
In 2017, the sales continued to be poor for the company having been able to shift only 200,000 units throughout the year despite launching flagship devices such as the KeyOne with its physical keyboard feature. In a phone interview with The Record, technology analyst Carmi Levy said nobody should be surprised by BlackBerry's decision to end support for its older smartphones and the BBOS.
"In technology as in other sectors, nothing lasts forever, and it's rather unfair for consumers to assume that vendors will provide full support for anything they buy forever," Levy explained. "I think what BlackBerry is doing here is simply reflecting the realities of the market."
