After a rocky start, BlackBerry Messenger is taking off, at least on iOS devices.
Even though the debut of the BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, app happened a couple of weeks after the intended release date, BlackBerry's social messaging app has definitely found its audience.
After just a day of being available, the BBM app is currently number one on the Apple iTunes App Store's Free Apps list. As noted by CNET, it's difficult to judge how popular the Android version of BBM - which was released at the same time - has become, as Google Play seemingly hasn't updated its top free apps list yet.
However, the popularity of the BBM app was quite apparent on its launch day, Monday, as BlackBerry had to use a waitlist to spread out iOS and Android BBM activations - requiring potential users who had downloaded the BBM app to wait until they got an email from BlackBerry before they started using the app.
BlackBerry Messenger was already seemingly going to be popular, though, weeks before the actual launch of the app. Soon before the first slated release date of BBM for iOS and Android, an unreleased version of the app for Android leaked online, causing about a million people to download and set up the app without BlackBerry's permission - eventually causing BlackBerry to have to deactivate the unreleased app and clear out the unwanted traffic from its servers.
BlackBerry has said it had 5 million downloads on iOS and Android after just a few hours of the BBM app being available.
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