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BBM gets 10 million downloads in 24 hours

36

bbm-for-all

While many Blackberry naysayers would have you believe BBM is a dated, tired piece of uselessness that no one wants, the download numbers the Canadian company has enjoyed in the first 24 hours of launch on Android and iOS say otherwise. Blackberry has announced that they have amassed more than 10 million downloads in the first day.

With that, Blackberry took this time to remind us that features like BBM Video, BBM Voice and BBM Channels would be coming to these apps (they’re already available on Blackberry devices). They also promised that more updates would be coming down the line to bring even more great features — we’re not sure what these would be so soon, but any update is a good update.

Blackberry anticipated so many downloads that they had to implement a queue to make sure their servers could handle the surge of customers. While many people were able to get to the front of the line in no time, some might still be waiting to receive their green light to sign up.

If you are unfortunate enough to be one of those people, you might be happy to know that a workaround could help you skip the line. You can find more details about that here. Some folks have reported that this method doesn’t work, but I’ve received many reports that it does. In short — your mileage may vary. Give it a shot, and see if Blackberry is offering enough to get you to break away from your other platforms of choice.

[Blackberry via iSource]

Quentyn Kennemer
The "Google Phone" sounded too awesome to pass up, so I bought a G1. The rest is history. And yes, I know my name isn't Wilson.

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36 Comments

  1. Good for them. I honestly have no use for this, my messaging app is enough

  2. I’m glad BB finally worked out the kinks, I’m digging the messager so far

  3. Is this for people who want to try and hold on to the past.

    1. Women are heavily using it.. And I like women. Therefore I have it.

      1. The one thing most of us techies don’t understand is it is not easy getting friends, family, wives of gf’s using different clients. This is something that all of them have heard of so it’s easy to get them to switch.

  4. Love phandroid but didn’t anyone see the article on androidpolice calling into question the obviously fake favorable reviews and thus the numbers for people downloading said app?

  5. “Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth.” –India

    1. Whats up with all the same reviews??? whats BB doing???

    2. Looks like they are taking a page out of the Samsung Playbook.

      1. Wasn’t the Playbook another BlackBerry failed product…

        1. Yes, I was trying to be witty… =o

    3. So are they trolling, are they paid or they just copy paste what seemed good?

    4. But the reviews are only for 3 stars. If you’re going to cheat wouldn’t you give yourself the best possible score?

  6. Unfortunately, the fact still remains that this free app does nothing to help BlackBerry. The make no money off of it, and the messenger, which some claim was more secure and propriety to BlackBerry only, is now no longer their own.

    Basically, other than giving up the only thing that they had that was truly “theirs,” this doesn’t change anything.

    Yes, I downloaded it. Seems to work just fine for chatting with my few friends overseas who are still stuck in the dark ages.

    1. This may be the 1st move, get 600 million BBMs onto Android and iPhones. Next, release physical Android phones or dual boot phones (BB10 & Android). Give users choice to buy 1 with single O/S (Android) or a fantastic phone with 2 O/S. Between Samsung and BlackBerry, I’ll take the Android based BB. Two O/S – BlackBerry 100%. May even entice IOS fanboys to switch.

  7. @dj_martinez:disqus No kidding…

    1. These people look like Lord of the Rings characters.

      1. they shall not pass.

  8. From the source: “When we saw almost one million people install an unreleased version of the Android version, another million use workarounds to download BBM onto their iPhones and another six million people pre-register to know when BBM became available for iPhone and Android, we knew we were on to something huge. I’ve seen reports of apps that launched with one million downloads in a day, but over 10 million? Amazing”

    Can someone please tell me how that translates to 10 million downloads, because pre-registering for something, and actually downloading are two different things.

    1. I think all of those things all happened before the launch of the app… he was saying he expected it to be big due to the pre-release buzz but he didnt know that pre-launch interest would turn into so many downloads so quickly.

      1. Oh okay. That makes sense.

  9. Good for them they deserve it.

  10. What I love and always have love about the BBM app is one point
    nobody points out and that is user specific pin. I can give any girl
    my BBM pin and chat with her and she will never have my number.
    This also makes it easier to get a girls contact. Sometimes they don’t
    want to give their phone number to strangers, but are willing to give out
    their BBM pin. Used to get many girls back then when Blackberry was popular.
    God I miss those days…

    1. You can give them your gmail user name now and they can chat you just as easily using hangouts. AND you don’t have to remember a bunch of user specific pins on top of phone numbers and email addresses.

  11. Great reviews lol

    Anees Imran October 23, 2013

    lol Thank you so much BlackBerry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth

    Bryan Hecht October 22, 2013

    Trolololololo Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth

    Sandeep Bhardwaj October 21, 2013

    Thanks blackberry Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth.

    Ayoe Dwie October 22, 2013

    [email protected] Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth.

    hosny eldamasy October 23, 2013

    hosny Thanks blackberry Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth.

    1. ahh paid ratings lol gotta love it

    2. I’ve been waiting for you, BBM. We meet again, at last. The circle
      is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now *I* am the
      master.

      And really great user friendly and smooth.

  12. 10,000,000 downloads, 9,990,000 uninstalls in the first 15 minutes. Why does anyone need this app? I tested it out and it offers no features i want over hangouts or whatsapp. Not to mention I had 1 contact who also had the app. Waste of time. Blackberry was like 2 years to late for this app.

  13. Well, some of the best things ever invented were invented by necessity and desperation. I hope this BBM works out. It just might be Blackberry’s last hope.

  14. Why does the app store still show a count of 5,000-10,000,000, if they’ve already had 10million DLs in under 24hrs. In any case I want to see the number of activated users, guessing under 100,000. The other important metric is how many have uninstalled as I’ve done. Running on my task bar with zero functionality, WTH, FAIL!!!!

    1. I’m guessing that they mean 10 million downloads between both android and iOS.

    2. Umm… You kill the app, problem solved. Once you’re able to sign up you can take off the notification within the settings.

      Patience young one.

  15. Quite amazed. I know I’m not interested in the slightest.

  16. And they’re all using the same review. Come one, someones stacking the downloads and the reviews.

  17. Bbm has always been a app even on a blackberry as it was just pin messages before in the early days, bbm is like a extention add on to the base pin system the blackberry had alone. The pin concept has always been futuristic in the sense it uses a short alphanumeric phrase to connect streams of data. Great job blackberry, a true bbm fan can actually live without facebook but not whatsapp not until now, the blackberry device or whatever you wanna call it is no longer needed now they have ported the bbm app. In theory using bbm this way means our virtual pin/blackberry device lives primarily on the bb server and is heavily tied to our log in details email server space ect which is great, now all blackberry need is a social site like facebook of not better and thats it. Many will hate me for this but I would say only make it available for high end devices, slow old apple or low end android devices will slow up the server just like every slow blackberry did, i mean 700MHz in most blackberry?? They taking the mick outta us. Anywho see ya! #DJLNR

  18. Make sure you add ya boi to your BBM list of contacts homie! Holla back.

    I’m in Charlotte, so if u are near, that’s kool! Feels good to be back on BBM. People just have a love-hate relationship with BB. If you’ve never owned a BB you can never understand.

    7B725FA9!

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