BlackBerry appears to have scored a hit among Android and iPhone users with its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) application. According to the company, the long-delayed app has been downloaded more than 10m times in just 24 hours after release on the two platforms.
The financially troubled Canadian company elected earlier this year to extend BBM beyond its own devices and onto the two rival platforms, choosing to compete directly with services such as WhatsApp and WeChat, owned by Naspers’s Chinese associate Tencent, for the first time. The app is available through Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
However, users in Southern Africa will have to wait until 8pm on Thursday evening to download BBM, which is available exclusively for now to Samsung users through the Korean company’s local app store.
BBM remains particularly popular in emerging markets, including South Africa, but its market share has been eroded by the emergence of cross-platform apps. WhatsApp, for example, has more than 300m active users; BBM has in the region of 60m.
According to BlackBerry, BBM has quickly become the number one free app in 75 countries in the Google and Apple stores.
“The mobile messaging market is full of opportunity for BBM,” says Andrew Brocking, the executive vice-president at BlackBerry in charge of the service, in a prepared statement.
Android and iPhone users will have access to BBM voice and video calling, as well as the new “community building tool” — BBM Channels — in the “near future”, the company says. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media
