Andre Yoskowitz
31 Mar 2014 15:17
BlackBerry's most popular product, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) has reached a new milestone this week, reaching 85 million monthly active users.
The messaging service was recently made available to Android and iOS, increasing the potential userbase by a massive amount. The now cross-platform client appears to be sticky, seeing decent growth in its monthly active users (MAUs) and a strong growth in its registered users.
As of this week, BBM now has 85 million monthly users and 113 million registered users. "We have a very solid BBM monetisation plan," says CEO John Chen. "We're seeing a solid uptick in multi platform users, driving growth in total registration. Like last quarter, growing the BBM user base is a top priority and we have a number of initiatives driving this."
In addition, BBM is headed to Windows Phone by the end of the fiscal Q2, and it is already pre-loaded on the Nokia X and some other Lumia devices.
Perhaps most importantly for the service, there are now 500,000 "Channels," the message-board style group interactions. "BBM Channel is drawing some strong interest from brands and business," adds Chen. "We add a lot of new Channel daily. Recent partners include CNBC, Time, Rolling Stone and Virgin Atlantic... This number is growing very fast."