BlackBerry’s messenger application is up to a strong start though it was expected given the stature the company enjoys. Within the first week of its debut at the Google and Apple app stores, the popular messenger application has already gone for 20 million plus downloads. BBM has always been among the most sought after features of BlackBerry devices though unfortunately, with the company finding itself in a mess, it has made the messenger available across rival platforms, Android and iOS.
First BBM announced that it was going to come up with a version of its popular messenger app that would enable it to be run on Android devices. When it was first released there were few Android devices that could use the application. BlackBerry had then issued an update to their app which brought in more Android devices under its ambit. But there are yet Android users like those using Android Ice Cream Sandwich who are not able to run BBM on their devices even though BlackBerry specifies Android 4.0 and above as the minimum requirement for their messenger to be compatible.
What to expect soon:
BlackBerry has also announced that Android users of the app would soon get the add-on which enables them for making Video Calling, Voice calls and BBC Channel viewing. Executive in charge of BlackBerry BBM, Andrew Bocking has personally announced this when mentioning that the company has few more surprises up their sleeves to be revealed soon. As of now, BBM has turned out to be the top free application running in the market today.
What BlackBerry would however have to look out for is that, Android users would not have much of a contact list in the BBM application. There is Whatsapp and the likes which have been available for Android and therefore most users of Android devices would be having these messenger services for their contact list. Therefore the question remains whether BBM remains high on the demand list for long enough or not. Whatsapp as on date has about 300 million users worldwide. BBM, on the other hand claims to have a combined user strength of 80 million, which means there is a lot of catching up to do.