BlackBerry announced that it will be closing the official BlackBerry app store by December 2019. By the way, did you know that BlackBerry still has an app store?
The app store will be the latest casualty of BlackBerry to Android, which officially took place in 2015 with the release of the Priv. Since then, BlackBerry has stopped making its own phones, and the BlackBerry 10 (BB10) platform — its last attempt to run its own mobile operating system, with models like the Z10 — has since been shut down. (The company’s older, more popular devices like the Curve ran BBOS.)
BlackBerry is now focusing on enterprise software with an emphasis on security. It still releases Android phones on a regular basis, but they are manufactured by TCL.
BlackBerry sold just 200,000 phones last year, meaning it held about 0% of the global smartphone market.
Technologies like BlackBerry Travel, which allows BlackBerry users to plan and book trips from their devices, and PlayBook, the video conferencing app for the company's popular PlayBook tablet, will be shut down in February and March 2018, respectively. The shutdown of the apps, the company said, is a natural step in the company's swing toward software.
The company would not disclose the number of people still using the apps.
BlackBerry may be irrelevant to the basic ways consumers use their phones today, but it will certainly be missed by some. The company's announcement sparked a wave of nostalgia on Twitteras people looked back on its glory days.
However, BlackBerry loyalists shouldn't lose hope.
BlackBerry says it will offer a trade-in program that will allow you to upgrade your BB10 or BBOS device to a BlackBerry KeyOne or Motion, both of which run Android, at a huge discount.
