July Was One Of The Strongest Months For BlackBerry Messenger Growth

BlackBerry’s hardware division hasn’t exactly been doing well over the past couple of years but the company did make one good decision and that was to spinoff BlackBerry Messenger as a separate division. This has allowed the company to improve its cross-platform messaging service considerably and add more value to it. As the company gears up to celebrate BBM’s 10th birthday this month it has revealed that July was one of the strongest months on record for BlackBerry Messenger growth.

User growth remained quite strong throughout the month of July, says BlackBerry without revealing any numbers, the company says that this growth was primarily driven by the release of BBM 2.9 with Material Design updates for Android, as well as increased user influx during summer holidays and strong word-of-mouth.

BlackBerry has been steadily adding new features to its messaging service, over 30 million stickers are being sent over BBM every single day with people spending money to purchase new sticker packs via the BBM Shop. It’s proving to be quite the revenue stream for BBM.

Then there’s the most recent addition of PayPal, BBM users can send money to family and friends by linking their accounts with PayPal. This follows BB’s other mobile payments initiatives under the BBM Money brand.

BlackBerry may not be the dominant force in the smartphone market anymore but it has created some space for itself in the cross-platform messaging segment, and if a much rumored acquisition ever happens, it just might fetch in good money for the company.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BBM, BlackBerry, blackberry messenger