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BlackBerry Gets Surprisingly Hot Early Sales With BBM Stickers - Forbes

Just two days after BBM Stickers launch, BBM has rocketed up the iPhone sales charts in key Asian and African markets. Could BBM be turning into a real revenue generator?

BlackBerry unveiled paid stickers for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) tailored for Apple's iPhones and Google's Android smartphones two days ago. Premium sticker packs with 20-25 stickers cost roughly $2 in various currencies around the world. They are basically themed emojis meant to be inserted to text messages to emphasize or complement written content. It is not clear at all how consumers will respond to BBM stickers. Japanese and Korean consumers love them and sticker sales for messaging apps like LINE and KakaoTalk are now generating hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter for Asian texting app champions. But BBM’s user base is probably older and more professional than that of its Asian rivals – will stickers resonate with the BBM base?

The early signs are highly positive. In Africa’s biggest smartphone market, South Africa, BBM has rocketed to #3 on iPhone Social Networking app chart measured by revenue generation. It is worth noting that the Asian sticker giants LINE and WeChat are at #22 and #37. In South-East Asia’s keystone app market, Indonesia, BBM is also already at #3 on Social Networking revenue chart, with rivals LINE at #1, Path at #2, Viber at #6, KakaoTalk at #14 and WeChat at #18. Indonesia has been a battleground for all leading messaging apps. Immediately after the sticker feature debut, BBM started beating far more established rivals with bigger user bases. It’s certainly interesting that BBM is already performing on par with Viber in app sales considering Viber was recently valued at nearly $1 B and it has a long head start over BBM in offering in-app purchases.

Source: forbes.com