NEW YORK: Canadian handset maker BlackBerry said its popular chat application BBM for rival Android-based handsets and iPhones has witnessed over 10 million downloads in the first 24 hours of its re-launch. The struggling Smartphone maker had yesterday resumed the rollout of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

"It's been 24 hours since we resumed the launch of BBM for Android and iPhone. And what a day it's been! We've already had more than 10 million downloads of BBM," BlackBerry EVP (BBM) Andrew Bocking said in a post on the company's official blog.

In September, BlackBerry had paused the global rollout of its instant messaging service BBM on rival phones, blaming the delay on issues caused by an unreleased old version of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger).

"When we saw almost one million people install an unreleased version of the Android version, another million use workarounds to download BBM onto their iPhones and another six million people pre-register to know when BBM became available for iPhone and Android, we knew we were on to something huge," he noted.

The application has also seen 'overwhelmingly positive reviews' on Google Play and the App Store. BBM has earned 60,000 five-star reviews on Google Play from about 87,000 reviews, he added.

On Apple's App Store, BBM rose quickly in the free app rankings in the first 24 hours, taking the number one slot in more than 75 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Indonesia and most of the Middle East, Bocking said.

BlackBerry said it will add more new features to BBM to promote it as the private social network.

"While we're excited to bring BBM to iPhone and Android - we aren't stopping there. Work isn't slowing down at all. We committed to delivering a BBM experience on iPhone and Android that was equal to that on BlackBerry 10. That means bringing BBM Video, BBM Voice and BBM Channels...

"My team is still committed to bringing those features to BBM on Android and iPhone in the near future. And we are not stopping there - we have some great new features planned that will build on BBM as the private social network you count on for immediate conversations you can control and trust," Bocking said.

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