RE:RE:Breaking! BlackBerry's instant messaging app is a hit among Android and Apple smart phone users. The Globe's Sean Silcoff writes more than 10 million people signed up for the BlackBerry Messenger service in the first 24 hours after its release on Monday for non-BlackBerry users. The company says it is processing new users at a rate of 500,000 an hour, with millions more queued up. "We have absolutely incredible demand we're trying to manage," BlackBerry spokesman Jeff Gadway said. "We're off to a really good start." The rush for the new BBM app is a welcome moment BlackBerry. The millions of new BBM users are in addition to the 60 million already using the service on their BlackBerrys. The app is free, and other players have moved ahead of BlackBerry in the instant-messaging race. BBM was the first instant messenger exclusively for mobile devices and became hugely popular and a driver of device sales in the late 2000s. Similar apps were developed, and some are now far more popular than BBM, including China's WeChat, Line from Japan and WhatsApp from the United States, each boast more than 200 million users. Canada's Kik Interactive has 90 million monthly users.The wireless
industry earns $200
billion per year and is expected to grow to $
400 billion by
2014. ...
