Yes, we knew the launch of BlackBerry’s popular chat app on Android and iPhone was going to be big — c’mon, the unreleased version had more than a million users and it was just a leak — but 5-million downloads eight hours after the official apps were released is seriously impressive. Even crazier? The fact that BlackBerry saw 10-million downloads in the first 24 hours after the launch.
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Yes, that’s the latest figure out of Waterloo, with BlackBerry Messenger head Andrew Bocking revealing that the company has already clocked more than 10-million downloads of its cross-platform messaging app (which is available in the Apple App Store and Google Play as well as Samsung’s app store). In addition to that, Bocking says that the iPhone version of the app reached the number one spot in the App Store’s free app rankings in more than 75 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Indonesia and most of the Middle East.
According to mobile analytics and ranking service App Annie, the iPhone app is currently number one in countries ranging from Jordan to Colombia, Mexico, Australia, Singapore, Spain and Egypt. It is ranked in the top ten apps overall in 93 countries worldwide, and amassed between 1 and 5-million downloads in Google Play — and, due to a deal with Samsung, it hasn’t even been released for iPhone (and non-Samsung Androids) in Sub-Saharan Africa as yet.
While the delayed initial roll out seems to have helped BlackBerry both gauge interest and build hype, it also allowed them to gather more than 6-million sign ups on BBM.com, with potential early adopters rewarded with the ability to skip the queue as the roll out continues. Still, 10-million downloads in a day isn’t a minor feat — to put that in perspective, it took Rovio three days to see 10-million downloads of Angry Birds Space, and the much-anticipated release of Instagram on Android saw the Facebook-owned photography app clock up 1-million downloads on launch day and pass 5-million five days later.
Then again, we’ll still have to wait and see if BlackBerry’s initial early success translates into regular monthly users rather than just a once-off spike.
