[Fortunate Fool]

The most surprising aspect of BBM?s success is probably its strong showing in Asia, where it is competing head to head against powerhouse messaging apps like LINE, WeChat and KakaoTalk. Brand new data from Distimo shows download shares of leading messaging apps across a broad spectrum of Asian countries. This data was gathered over the month of November, so it does not include the first week spike of BBM downloads that yielded 10 Million new users across Apple's AAPL +0.68% iOS and Google's GOOG -0.2% Android devices.


Exclusive New Survey Shows BlackBerry's BBM Beating WhatsApp And SnapChat In Key Markets
Tero Kuittinen
Contributor
This is a market share snapshot from a period when the first wave of BlackBerry loyalists had already downloaded the app. It is fascinating that BBM managed to beat both LINE and Tencent?s WeChat in Indonesia with a towering 39% share. But it may be even more impressive that BBM hit 26% share in Malaysia, which has become the ground zero of Asian messaging app wars. This is 12 points below WeChat, but 9 points ahead of LINE. Both of these Asian rivals have poured a ton of marketing resources into Malaysia in 2013 in a bid to bind it to their sphere of influence.

BBM also manages to beat LINE and WeChat in Philippines, where Viber eked out a surprise win. Viber has turned into something of a black horse in the global messaging battles ? few would have expected it to edge out giants like LINE and WeChat in markets like India and Philippines.

BBM obviously has three big headaches: China, Japan and Korea, where it is making no impact. What makes LINE so impressive is its ability to eke out 15-16% download share in China and Korea, territories utterly dominated by WeChat and KakaoTalk. LINE is really the only messaging system with genuine pan-Asian appeal. But for BBM, its early success in the populous markets of India, Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia is more than anyone expected. If sustained, this traction should be enough to buoy the global BBM user base to 200 Million by the end of 2014. That is enough to turn the system into a major content delivery platform.

BlackBerry's November Triumph - Exclusive New BBM Download Data - Forbes

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[Iggy City]

That is good news. People tend to forget the world exists outside of North America (although it is a large important market).