BlackBerry had another high-profile executive departure today, as Executive Vice President of BBM Andrew Bocking has left the smartphone and enterprise software maker. Bocking’s exit was first reported by BGR, but BlackBerry confirmed the move to TechCrunch in an emailed statement, and explained that BBM’s new home will be in its Global Enterprise Solutions under John Sims.
“Andrew Bocking, EVP, BBM has made the decision to leave BlackBerry,” BlackBerry said in its statement. “We thank him for his years of leadership and contribution.”
The BBM EVP role won’t be filled by another candidate at this point, the company revealed to TechCrunch, and instead BBM will fall under the purview of Sims. BlackBerry says that this doesn’t mean that BBM product development falls by the wayside, however.
“The BBM organization remains as a group within BlackBerry and will continue to focus on BlackBerry and BBM strength in messaging and new areas of strength such as mobile marketing, community-building and enterprise messaging,” they explained in a statement. “John Sims, President, Global Enterprise Solutions, who has extensive experience in mobile messaging, will add the BBM team to his organization.”
Sims does indeed have prior mobile experience – he was SAP’s mobile lead before being hired by BlackBerry back in December, where he oversaw the sending and receiving of 1.8 billion messages per day according to a press release from April last year.
The new home for BBM suggests it could possibly be focused more on the enterprise market, which might mean shying away from the consumer push that’s been going on recently. The iOS and Android apps were greeted with an enthusiastic response from users when they were launched last year, but we haven’t heard much about their progress since.
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