At BlackBerry’s earnings call earlier this week, CEO John Chen revealed some vital statistics relating to their popular messaging application. Called BlackBerry Messenger or BBM, the service has crossed 160 million registered users. Out of these 85 million are active monthly users. While this number might appear large at first glance, it is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the 500 million active user base of the likes of WhatsApp. BlackBerry Messenger has been trying to increase its user base ever since it went crossplatform. The company is honest in saying that revenue from BBM isn’t substantial but they expect to change that by offering new services built on top of the messaging platform. This includes BBM Money and BBM Channels.
BlackBerry Messenger’s cross platform bid doesn’t seem to be entirely successful given that out of the 85 million MAUs about 50 million are on BlackBerry devices. The company will launch a Windows Phone version of the application in July. The app which’ll be available as a preload on Nokia’s Lumia handsets should help the company cross the 100 million MAU threshold.