Among the quarterly highlights that BlackBerry announced its latest financial results, including a massive US$4.4 billion loss, the company revealed that it added some some 40 million Android and iOS users to its BBM user base in the last 60 days. At the same time, BlackBerry did not reveal the size of its total user base.
BlackBerry released BBM for Android and iOS in late October and saw 20 million new users in the week that followed. While the initial momentum has slowed, the numbers show that the messaging app remains popular.
Along with the just announced LG deal to have BBM preinstalled on some of its smartphones, BlackBerry has similar agreements with “more than a dozen Android OEMs” in emerging markets. No names were mentioned today but here’s hoping that BlackBerry will soon be adding some other big names soon.
The company yesterday also gave further insight into what features it plans to include in future updates of the Android and iOS versions of BBM. Among those are BBM Voice and BBM Channels, improved sharing features including one that lets you share your location for a limited amount of time, and some 100 new emoticons, including ROTFL, Epic Fail, Face palm, a serious hug and yes, even a smiley-poo.
The new BBM features are already being beta tested. They should launch “on Android, iPhone and BlackBerry 10 in the next couple months.”
Sources : BlackBerry // Inside BlackBerry Blog