BlackBerry officials are ecstatic that while their smartphones don't sell, their messaging app for Android and iOS phone owners had reached 20 million downloads in one week.

The impressive public response to the availability of the BBM will be a bargaining chip for the Waterloo, Ontario-based phonemaker when it deals with potential buyers of the embattled company.

With the new users of BBM, total users has reached 80 million, further boosting BlackBerry's chance of getting a good selling price to potential buyers which include Fairfax Financial - BlackBerry's largest shareholder, Lenovo and former BlackBerry CEO Mike Laziridis.

BlackBerry officials reportedly went to California last week to hold talks with Facebook officials about a sale, but the two companies were silent of the meeting.

BlackBerry said in a statement, "After the amazing launch of BBM on Android and iPhone devices, with more than 10 million downloads in the first 24 hours, BBM has now ended its first week with more than 80 million monthly active users, including over 20 million new users on Android and iPhone devices."

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Encouraged by the public response, the company said that in the coming months, it would start to offer video calling, voice calling, BBM Channels which is a new community-building service to link BBM users to a wider group made up of Android and iPhone users.

However, BBM Executive Vice President Andrew Bocking, said the number of downloads is not as important as active users of the app. "It's great to see so many people downloading BBM, but the true measure for us is engagement - the connections being made and the conversations in which our BBM community engages."

BBM's 80 million, however, is just 23 per cent of the leading messaging app for smartphones, WhatsApp, which has more than 350 million active users globally.

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