In yet another sad sign of the troubled times for Research In Motion, popular mobile ISV YouMail has just announced it has delivered its last update on the BlackBerry platform.
Ironically, the BlackBerry was the first smartphone platform on which YouMail started doing app development, driving much of its early growth, and it is currently in the top 10 of the App Market’s free/paid productivity apps.
The bad news also strikes a different blow against RIM as the company has expressed optimism about its relationship with developers as it gears up for its BlackBerry World 2012 and BlackBerry 10 Jam events in Orlando, Fla., at the beginning of May.
In an April 13 blog post, YouMail CEO Alex Quilici shed light on why YouMail was suspending support for the BlackBerry. Quilici said the latest release is bittersweet for YouMail, because we are suspending doing any further work on the BlackBerry app, at least for now.
Quilici also noted that, Its sad, but on many days, were now getting fewer BB users than Windows Phone 7 users, and we dont even have a Windows Phone 7 app!
Spelling it out, Quilici said:
This was a tough decision, since the BlackBerry is what got us our first million registered users and put us on the map as a company. But over the past year, weve seen our BlackBerry audience steadily shrink, with a steady exodus of those users moving to the iPhone and to Android (where fortunately, theyre tending to keep YouMail as their voice mail service). And weve also seen the number of users/day completely plummet.
Meanwhile, Quilici exhorts BlackBerry users to enjoy the latest release of YouMail and added: If BlackBerry stages a comeback (were rooting for BB10 to take off!), or we can figure out how to drive a meaningful number of new BlackBerry users, well be back.
Changes in the new BlackBerry release of YouMail include bug fixes and other minor feature additions, as well as making contact uploading and updating work more smoothly. However, Quilici said the major changes in the new release are as follows:
- Users can ditch callers and see a list of callers that have been ditched, and those callers will hear a number out of service message. Its easy to get rid of bothersome callers, like telemarketers.
- The app has been completely rebuilt to be much more stable with a faster user interface. There was a long list of known problems with how it was implemented, and YouMail spent time cleaning things up.
- Finally, ads have been removed from the app. Not only is the app free, but its also ad-free.
YouMail is a provider of cloud-based enhanced telecommunication services. The companys free flagship Visual Voicemail Plus application offers a multiplatform, unified and social voice mail experience for its users on BlackBerry, Android, iPhone, WebOS, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 6.5 platforms, and has been adopted by consumers and by carriers as either their default or recommended voice mail service.