Less than eight hours after officiallyhitting Apple’s App Storeand Google’s Play store, the BlackBerry Messenger app (free download) has seen more than five million active downloads on iOS and Android combined, BlackBerry announced in atweet.
The messaging application is a staggered rollout which employs a reservation system to prevent the kind of a server strain seen after the Android build had leaked out prematurely. According to some repots, there’s a workaround that could let you use the app without waiting…
Here’s BlackBerry’s tweet.
Next 5 million in line – your turn! Open up BBM and click “I got the email” to get started on#BBMright away!
— BBM (@BBM)July 04, 2025
For the sake of completeness, the five million metric excludes downloads as the figure applies to those that have downloaded and activated the app on their devices.
For more on BBM, check out Yahoo’s nice hands-on article.
BBM lets you chat with friends on iPhone and other smartphones that run the app and comes with a host of features such as multi-party chat and sharing, always-on connectivity, profile editing, emoticons, typing and availability indicators, animated GIFs in profile images, status updates and more.
Here’s how:
- Fire up the app and enter your e-mail address2. Tap Next and then force-close BBM (double-click the Home button and swipe the app away)3. Relaunch the app and you should be able to get past the wait list
At this point, you’ll either have to provide your existing BBM credentials (provided you signed up at BBM.com beforehand) or create a brand new account.
I’ve had a mixed success with the trick.
I tried deleting and re-downloading the software, to no avail.
BlackBerry has the power to fix the workaround at any time on their end and it seems they’ve done just that, at least for some users.
Of course, your mileage may (and will) vary so I invite you to share your experience with fellow readers down in the comments.
