One week ago we launched BBM for iPhone and Android. What a week it’s been! With the addition of more than 20 million new users on BBM, we are now at over 80 million monthly active users* of BBM across BlackBerry, Android and iPhone, and #teamBlackBerry is thrilled. During its first week, BBM was the top free overall app in 35 countries on Google Play™ and in 107 countries in the App StoreSM and continues to maintain a strong position in key markets such as Canada, the US, the UK, Indonesia and much of the Middle East, to name a few.

Clearly, the momentum of BBM for BlackBerry, Android and iPhone continues to grow and while we are excited by the download numbers we saw this week, downloads do not speak to the way people interact with each other using BBM and we will now focus on active use of BBM – the connections being made and the conversations in which our BBM community engages.

During this first week, the BBM team also worked to quickly publish updates for both iPhone and Android users that introduced additional features and performance enhancements. On Saturday, we removed the line-up from Google Play and the App Store and customers can now download, sign in and start using BBM!

For those of you new to BBM, welcome! Be sure to check out our how-to videos and getting started guide. These will help you get the most out of BBM and discover all that it has to offer. The feedback on BBM’s immediacy in message delivery, the ease of use BBM offers and the reliability offered by the delivery [D] and read [R] notifications has been absolutely amazing!

To our long-time BBM users on BlackBerry, thank you. Thank you for inviting your colleagues, friends and family to join you on BBM over the last week, and for sharing your passion for BBM with them. I also want to thank the BBM team and the employees at BlackBerry. The tremendous success we’ve seen this week wouldn’t be possible without your hard work, dedication and commitment.

One of the hidden gems of our launch that is now coming to light is our sharing tool athttp://www.bbm.com/share, which helps our users quickly add new contacts to BBM. There is also a new way to share your PIN so that Android and iPhone customers can easily click it and add you to BBM:http://www.pin.bbm.com/. We are seeing a lot of excitement as people share PINs and get connected on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more.

BBM is set apart in the mobile messaging space by offering immediacy and a feeling of connecting and collaboration that mirrors the feeling of a face-to-face conversation, all within a simple and easy user experience.

We also put control back into people’s hands. Let’s not underestimate the importance of deciding who will have access to you and your information and how you will build a community of those people.

We still have a few more tricks up our sleeves and I will look to share more with you as we bring new features to BBM in the coming months.

*Monthly active users are defined as BBM users who send or receive any data through the BBM service within a given 30-day period.