BlackBerry has today announced that it has 90 million active BBM users and the service is growing.
Under the reign of Thorsten Heins, BlackBerry stated that they would now be announcing “active” users as this figure had more meaning. This was opposed to just stating their subscriber figures or download figures.
They also stated that 70% of this 90 million are active on a daily basis. This means BBM has 63 million active users daily.
In terms of numbers, BlackBerry says that 2014 saw over 140 million new registrations to BBM from iPhone and Android devices. Of course, this doesn’t equate to 140 new active users and it is strange that they omitted Windows Phone figures and indeed BlackBerry 10 figures.
BlackBerry are getting quite adept at how they present numbers.  For instance, the BBM Shop saw 175 million visitors in the last year. While that figure looks good on paper, 175 million visitors to the BBM shop doesn’t mean 175 million purchases.
On the other hand, those 175 million visitors were potentially all shown ads and 400 million ad requests were placed.
Additionally, 300 million stickers were shared in 2014, and 1 million new channels were created.
While BlackBerry’s active user number of 90 million looks quite good in isolation, when you compare it to WhatsApp yesterday announcing they have 700 million “active” users, it is quite clear BBM has an uphill battle on it’s hands.
Ironically, BlackBerry seem to be concentrating on monetising BBM, rather than increasing the active user base.
