The user-base of the BBM has reportedly breached a record 85 million, six months after the Canadian telecommunication pioneer, BlackBerry rolled out the company's flagship communication service application to Google Android and Apple iOS platform.
BlackBerry's newly appointed chief, John Cheng in a video-conference chat with Tech Crunch confirmed that the company's BBM application monthly active user count is about 85 million with 113 million registered users.
Cheng predicts that the addition of new features in BBM (introduced in February -2014) like voice-call, location sharing, BBM channels, Drop-box integration and others will drive more traffic to the service.
"BBM Channel is drawing some strong interest from brands and business," said Cheng. "We add a lot of new Channel daily. Recent partners include CNBC, Time, Rolling Stone and Virgin Atlantic... This number is growing very fast." He once again reiterated that the company's cross platform messenger service will come to Windows Phone OS powered handsets this quarter (Q2). It has been already made available in the Nokia X running the tweaked Android OS.
Once released to Windows Phone ecosystem, future Nokia Lumia phones in select markets are said to come pre-loaded with BBM applications.
Here is a brief description of BBM v2.0 introduced in February:
BBM Voice: This feature allows the user to make free voice calls to anyone (across the globe) in their BBM contact list via internet (Wi-Fi or dataplans), thereby saving you hefty ISD bills (or even the roaming charges while you go out for foreign locations).
BBM Channels: This feature lets user initiate conversation with other BBM members with common interests. Users can create a Channel (profile) based on business, brands and discuss topics ranging from current events, favorite hobbies, entertainment and more.
Location Sharing (by Glympse): This feature allows users to share locations with the BBM contact list for a specific amount of time. This also serves working women, who can share location details with their friends and family, while travelling from home to work (and vice-versa) especially during the night. This feature is time bound; once the set-time has elapsed, the user locations will become private.
Share Pictures, Voice notes and more: With this feature, BBM messaging app becomes richer with addition of picture sharing, sending voice notes and calendar events.
Dropbox Integration: With this users can send important files from the personal cloud account to their BBM contact list (and vice-versa).
More Emoticons: BlackBerry seems to have take a leaf out of Google's Android KitKat (integration Emoji characters in text messaging app) OS update; BBM's new version will now 100 more emoticons to enhance the texting experience.
Larger Group: Now BBM users can add up to 50-members in their group.
