Wired Web and mobile instant messaging provider eBuddy has surpassed a milestone of 10 million J2ME downloads of its mobile IM client 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. The eBuddy Mobile Messenger is ramping at a rate of more than 1 million downloads per month.

"We have a Web and mobile business -- we're mainly on the Web, but our mobile division is growing faster," said Jan-Joost "JJ" Rueb, cofounder/CEO of eBuddy, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. "The eBuddy Mobile Messenger is growing at a crazy pace, an increase of 250 percent from last year -- we're getting 40-to-50,000 downloads a day on mobile phones."

EBuddy claims to be adding 100,000 new users a day between the Web and mobile.

The company also claims to be processing more than 1.5 billion messages per month on its mobile platform for more than 3 million unique monthly users.

Research analysts at Informa estimate the global market for mobile IM will become an $11 billion industry by 2011, and that IM penetration will be nearly 100 percent by the end of this decade.

EBuddy is available in 37 languages and offers two versions of its mobile client, the J2ME version called eBuddy Mobile Messenger and the mobile Internet browser version, eBuddy Lite Messenger.

The eBuddy Mobile Messenger features an eBuddy ID, which lets consumers create a single, unique ID that 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 a 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 notifications to offline buddies directly from contact lists, group chat, most recent chats on top and offline messaging functionality.

The eBuddy Lite Messenger features designs specifically created for Sony PSP, iPhone and iPod Touch and extra networks including Facebook and ICQ.

EBuddy claims that it has been the number-one mobile application download on GetJar for more than 15 consecutive weeks, beating out applications like Google Maps and Opera Mini.

The company believes that its single user average of 30 log-ins per month has been fueled by the increase in the number of customers who purchase flat-fee data bundles.

EBuddy created its independent, Web-browser-based IM service in 2003 and extended the service to mobile in June 2007.

The service is said to enable 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.

EBuddy's mobile IM solution offers a J2ME client at http://get.ebuddy.com and a WAP-browser-based IM service at http://m.ebuddy.com.

The eBuddy's MIM service has more than 3 million unique monthly users.

EBuddy is a privately-held company backed by Prime Technology Ventures and Lowland Capital Partners.

"We sell 1.5 billion banner ad impressions a month, and in Q1 we will start implementing mobile advertising on the client and XHTML versions," Mr. Rueb said. "On mobile we have not made any money yet, but we're starting to implement mobile advertising as well."

EBuddy also has plans to sell ad-free versions of its mobile application with extra functionality.

"We're working with carriers and equipment manufacturers worldwide to get eBuddy pre-installed," Mr. Rueb said. "The first carriers we talked to don't see any cannibalization of SMS, it's a different form of communication.

"If I'm late for dinner, I'll use SMS to let my girlfriend know, but if I want to ask what's for dinner, I'll use IM," he said. "There is a huge demand for IM on mobile phones."

EBuddy claims to have more than 70 million consumers in its database.

"Trutap and Echo have been going out of business over the last few weeks, which are smaller competitors of ours," he said. "On mobile we have tenfold the traffic of those companies."

Because of the viral nature of the site, eBuddy has spent less than $10,000 on marketing in total over the last five years since the company launched.

"It's all viral, people telling other people about eBuddy, we don't spend hardly anything on marketing, we just create really viral apps," Mr. Rueb said. "We have more than 2 million users a day.

"We tell them that we have a mobile app and people start downloading it," he said.