Hear that sound? It’s another death knell for Research in Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry device. The once dominant smartphone maker has been running into issue after issue recently, and the hits continue to come today as Google plans to kill the Gmail app on Blackberry phones.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that on November 22nd, Blackberry users will no longer be able to download the popular email app to their smartphone. Instead of having an integrated app, Google will focus on "building a great Gmail experience in the mobile browser.” The obvious disadvantage of this method is that Blackberry users will not receive notifications when new email messages have been received, nor will they be able to easily manage multiple Gmail accounts.
RIM has had a rocky time the past few years. The company controlled nearly 50% of the smartphone market just five years ago, but today controls only 11.6% as they lag far behind Apple and Google.
If you already have the Gmail app on your phone, the functionality will continue to work but new features will no longer be added. Having said that, why is Google pulling the app instead of leaving it available in an unsupported state?
25 Comments - Add comment