The once-pioneer in the smartphone industry, BlackBerry Ltd, formerly known as RIM has become a laughingstock in the market because of its disastrous condition. The company has lost almost its entire market share to its rivals and is on the edge of takeover. However, when there seems to be no hope for the company, its BlackBerry Messenger or BBM as it’s commonly known might bring a glimmer of hope for the struggling company. More than 10 million downloads were racked up by BlackBerry for its BBM app in the first 24 hours since it was released. This news was announced by a pleased BlackBerry. The Canadian smartphone maker had launched the app for both iOS and Android.

In a blog post, the executive vice president of BBM at BlackBerry, Andrew Bocking said that it is not uncommon to hear reports, which state that an app has had one million downloads in just 24 hours. In contrast, having 10 million downloads in just one day is nothing short of amazing. After a month long delay, the BlackBerry Messenger application was finally released on Monday. In the free app ranking of the Apple Play Store, the BBM app shot right up and it took up the number one slot of in over 75 countries, which include Canada, Indonesia, UK, US and most of Middle East.

Mr. Bocking also added that they had also seen a lot of positive reviews on the App Store and on Google Play as well. As a matter of fact, he asserted that from the total of 87,000 reviews that the application had received, about 60,000 of them were five star reviews. It had been originally planned by the company to launch BBM for Android and iOS on September 21st, but the release had been put off when a fake version had been leaked on the web and compromised the network of the company. Before the app had been released, a total of 6 million had signed up on the website of the company to receive information about BBM.

When the rollout of BBM had finally been resumed by the company, the Android and iOS versions of the applications had also been updated. A new BBM chat widget was added to the Android version of the app, which allows users to keep track of all their chats without having to open the app itself. As for the iPhone version, the BBM app has been optimized for iOS 7. Bocking also stated that users should stay tuned as additional features would be introduced for the application in the future. For now, the BBM team is focusing on bringing the BlackBerry 10 special features to the Android and iOS versions, which include features such as voice, video and channels.

However, it remains to be seen whether this BBM is enough to save BlackBerry from demise. The BB10 smartphones have failed to work for the company in order to regain its lost market share and is currently considering selling the company that would take it private.

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