BlackBerry was great, and once was the pioneer that changed how we see the mobile industry. But somehow the company has failed to keep up with the growing and shifting trends. Facebook and the popular WhatsApp it owned, are bidding farewell to BlackBerry.
"The app landscape continues to evolve, and in ways that are not always within our control," wrote BlackBerry Senior Marketing Manager Lou Gazzola.
WhatsApp was the one that first show its disinterest in BlackBerry APIs on early March 2016. Facebook which in 2015 passed the milestone of 1 billion people using its service in one day, then followed the lead of its subsidiary. The two are dumping native support for the smartphone-maker.
At the end of 2016, the two companies are ending their support for BlackBerry as a whole, putting the platform in the same place as Nokia's S40 and Symbian; joining Android 2.1 and 2.2, and Windows Phone 7.1 in the bin.
"While these mobile devices have been an important part of our story, they don't offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app's features in the future," said WhatsApp in a post.
Their main reason to pull the plug for BlackBerry is its market share. BlackBerry was once great, but in 2015, it was holding less than 1 percent of the smartphone market share.
Knowing that the two companies want to stop their support, BlackBerry was "extremely disappointed".
"We are extremely disappointed in their decision as we know so many users love these apps. We fought back to work with WhatsApp and Facebook to change their minds, but at this time, their decision stands," said BlackBerry in a blog post.
Unable To Compete: Attempting To Figure A Way Out
BlackBerry was great, and there is no denying that it has had a wonderful position on the market. It was the gadget of choice for business-oriented individuals to the likes of Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama.
It's BBM for example, it was indeed popular and was said to influence many parts of today's messaging platforms. It was also a great contender in the messaging war after WhatsApp and others come to play.
But it then faced a decline in recent years. Android and Apple account for the most smartphone sales in the world while in the U.S., BlackBerry is falling under the unfortunate "other" category, which accounts for only 0.1 percent of sales.
When the support ends, BlackBerry revealed that BBOS and BlackBerry 10 users will lose support for Facebook contact syncing, BlackBerry Hub integration and the ability to share media on the social media platform via the share button. And because Facebook had opted to discontinue their support of essential APIs for BlackBerry, users that are hoping to get by on third-party apps are also likely to be out of luck.
APIs are the very thing that developers build on when they create their own third-party apps. Without them, developers aren't "permitted" to build anything to connect their service to the platform.
With its sales growth at nowhere great anymore, there are still existing BlackBerry users that are faithful customers. BlackBerry is fighting for them, and its users are fighting for their faith.
One of the strategies initiated by the company was launching a hashtag campaign under #IloveBB10Apps. The strategy was led by a tweet from BlackBerry CEO John Chen. The hashtag is quickly gathering momentum as users of the business-focused, multitasking devices that were once at the forefront of popularity in the mobile industry move to express their discontent at the decision.
But sadly, again for BlackBerry, according to Twitter, only a handful of BlackBerry owners are still going along with it.
The decision led BlackBerry users in starting a petition as their attempt to save their app. But the online petition has only gathered 2,041 signatures of the 10,000 goal in 23 days.
With doors seem to be closed, BlackBerry will replace the official Facebook app with a new native app that will will funnel users to the web-version of Facebook. This will enable them to have access to Facebook, as stated in the company's changelog: "Those wishing to continue using Facebook are encouraged to move to the web-based experience which will provide the most feature rich alternative."
So at the meantime when BlackBerry is still fighting and explores other means. Users will have to use Facebook over the web browser instead.
