{"id":48551,"date":"2013-10-29T15:54:55","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T13:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=48551"},"modified":"2013-10-30T09:07:30","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T07:07:30","slug":"blackberry-reports-bbm-growth-spurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/48551\/blackberry-reports-bbm-growth-spurt\/","title":{"rendered":"BlackBerry reports BBM growth spurt"},"content":{"rendered":"

BlackBerry<\/a> has announced that having resumed the\u00a0roll-out of\u00a0BBM<\/a> for Android<\/a> and iPhone<\/a>\u00a0on 21 October 2013, it has generated\u00a020 million new active users in the first week.<\/p>\n

BlackBerry says that its BBM service now boasts 80 million monthly active users.<\/p>\n

During its first week, BBM was the top free overall app in 35 countries in Google Play and in 107 countries in the App StoreSM, and continues to maintain a strong position in key markets such as Canada, the US, the UK, Indonesia and much of the Middle East, to name a few.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is great to see so many people downloading BBM, but the true measurement for us is engagement \u2013 the connections being made and the conversations in which our BBM community engages. The power of BBM has always been the active, real conversations and interaction that our customers enjoy,\u201d said Andrew Bocking, executive VP of BBM at BlackBerry.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom here on out, we will focus on active users of BBM and will no longer focus on simple download numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Despite a turbulent time in the global smartphone market,\u00a0BlackBerry\u00a0remains a relevant and popular brand on the African continent, according to data from\u00a0advisory firm\u00a0International Data Corporation (IDC<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Smartphone shipments to Africa were up 21.5% year on year for Q2 2013, and\u00a0now account for 18.0% of the overall African mobile phone market\u2019s volume.<\/p>\n

More on BlackBerry and BBM<\/h3>\n

Wait, BlackBerry is growing?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

BBM for Android, iPhone frenzy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

BlackBerry rolls out BBM to Android, iOS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

BlackBerry sale an extension, not a solution<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

BlackBerry is dead \u2013 analyst<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Break-up the only way for BlackBerry \u2013 analysts<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

BlackBerry warned against consumer market retreat<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BlackBerry has announced that having resumed the roll-out of BBM for Android and iPhone on 21 October 2013, it has generated 20 million new active users in the first week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":48114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[685,1625,161,26,209],"class_list":["post-48551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-android","tag-bbm","tag-blackberry","tag-headline","tag-iphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48551"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48591,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48551\/revisions\/48591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}