BlackBerry says it will shutter its World app store on Dec. 31, 2019 and Playbook video calling in March 2018; BB10 gets 2+ years of additional support
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat :
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement lands after a two-year attrition of third-party apps from BlackBerry platforms: Facebook and Messenger pulled out of BlackBerry OS in 2016 (Facebook and Messenger dropped BlackBerry OS support), and WhatsApp followed with its own December 31 exit announced days after this piece (WhatsApp ended BlackBerry OS support). Against that backdrop, BlackBerry is drawing explicit end-of-life lines — World store closure at the end of 2019, PlayBook video calling by March 2018 — while promising BB10 owners more than two years of additional support.
The staged timeline matters because it shows BlackBerry managing decline rather than cutting everything at once: the later record confirms the arc, from Emtek shutting down consumer BBM in 2019 (consumer BBM's shutdown) to TCL ending BlackBerry-branded phone manufacturing in 2020 (TCL's licensing deal expiring) and key services going dark for BB10 and OS 7.1 devices in January 2022.
First-order effects
- BB10 users get a concrete runway — over two years of continued support — but a known endpoint for the World app store, meaning new app availability effectively freezes ahead of the December 31, 2019 cutoff.
- PlayBook tablet owners lose video calling in March 2018, an early signal that the 2011-era tablet is being fully abandoned before the phones.
Second-order effects
- With WhatsApp already leaving and the store itself scheduled to close, remaining developers have little incentive to ship updates for BB10, accelerating the app drought that pushed consumers toward Android and iOS handsets.
- Licensees like TCL inherit a brand whose consumer software backbone is visibly sunsetting, weakening the value proposition of the hardware partnership that later ends in 2020.
Third-order effects
- The sequence — app exits, store closure, license expiry, then full service shutdown — traces how a once-dominant mobile ecosystem unwinds when its developer base leaves, ending with devices losing calling, texting, data, and 911 access in January 2022.
- If the pattern holds, BlackBerry's future rests entirely on enterprise-grade services rather than consumer devices, a split foreshadowed by BBM Enterprise surviving consumer BBM's death.
The trend: BlackBerry is dismantling its consumer mobile ecosystem on a published schedule, stretching BB10 support just long enough to complete the pivot away from devices.