eBuddy, one of the world’s leading independent provider of web and mobile instant messaging (IM), recently experienced explosive mobile IM growth, surpassing a milestone of 10 million J2ME downloads of its mobile IM client, eBuddy Mobile Messenger since its launch in June 2007. The company’s mobile IM downloads have accelerated significantly since the last milestone of 5 million downloads of eBuddy Mobile Messenger was announced in July 2008.
"eBuddy Mobile Messenger is ramping at a rate of more than 1 million downloads per month, and we’re processing over 1.5 billion messages per month on our mobile platform for over 3 million unique monthly users," commented eBuddy’s CEO and co-founder, Jan-Joost "JJ" Rueb. "The rapid pace at which our application is being adopted shows how hungry and eager people are for an intuitive, high quality, easy-to-use IM application like eBuddy."
Research analysts at Informa estimates the global market for mobile IM to become an USD 11 billion (EUR 7.4 billion) industry by 2011, and that IM penetration will be nearly 100% by the end of this decade.
eBuddy created the world’s first independent, web browser-based IM service in 2003 and extended the service to mobile in June 2007. eBuddy’s patent-pending technology enables more than 18 million unique monthly users with AIM, Facebook, GoogleTalk, ICQ, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! IM accounts to chat free of charge in one interface without having to download or install any application.
image eBuddy is available in 37 languages and offers two versions of its mobile client, the popular J2ME version, eBuddy Mobile Messenger (http://get.ebuddy.com) and the mobile Internet browser version, eBuddy Lite Messenger (http://m.ebuddy.com) and is one of the world’s most popular and fastest growing MIM services with more than 3 million unique monthly users. eBuddy Mobile Messenger features a sleek user interface and an eBuddy ID which allows the user to create a single, unique ID which can be used to log-in and access all of their IM accounts simultaneously.
Additional features include the ability to take and send photos via mobile phone within the mobile IM application, the ability to take and set a mobile phone photo as your personal avatar, the ability to send SMS notification to offline buddies directly from contact lists, group chat, most recent chats on top and offline messaging functionality. eBuddy Lite Messenger features designs specifically created for Sony PSP, iPhone and iPod Touch and extra networks including Facebook and ICQ.
"eBuddy has been the #1 mobile application download on GetJar for more than 15 consecutive weeks, beating powerhouse applications like Google Maps and Opera Mini," said eBuddy’s VP of Products and Marketing, Jan-Joost Kraal.
"The application market is hot and mobile operators are fueling the rapid increase of mobile internet usage by offering affordable, flat-fee data packages not only in the Western world, but also in developing countries like India, China and Indonesia," added Kraal.
"eBuddy’s single user average of 30 log-ins per month is an excellent reason for customers to purchase flat-fee data bundles. The global realization of true mobile-Web convergence has only just begun."
eBuddy is based in Amsterdam with additional offices in London and San Francisco, and is a privately-held company backed by Prime Technology Ventures and Lowland Capital Partners.
