Viber crosses 100 mn active users

11 Jun 2014

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Viber, the VoIP and messaging app acquired recently by Japanese company Rakuten for $900 million, announced on Tuesday that it had crossed 100 million active users, TechCrunch reported.

Viber had thus far, released metrics only for registered users, but as was known there was a big difference between registered users and active monthly or daily users.

The company had 350 million unique registered downloads as of now and 100 million active concurrent users.

Much of this growth came down to availability, as Viber had worked hard to stretch across multiple platforms, including desktop, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and more.

According to commentators, Viber though growing was up against some big challenges with the messaging space as hot as it could be, especially with Facebook's $19 billion acquisition of Whatsapp.

Not only did Viber face competition from other messaging apps like WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk, etc, but it also faced competition from the platforms themselves, like Apple and Android.

The focus now continued to centre around expansion and capturing new markets. According to  Viber, it had added Portuguese and Spanish to existing languages such as English and Japanese.

According to commentators though it lagged far behind WhatsApp's 500 million active users as also Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani's aim for 2 billion Viber users, it was still a positive sign that Viber had plenty of room for growth.

In addition to the online user milestone, Viber released a new and improved version of its Viber Desktop application for PC, Mac, and Linux, which featured a new look and feel with a prominently displayed sticker menu. The menu can be docked to the side of the app, putting Viber's popular stickers front and centre. This made it easier to show emotions within user conversations.

Viber Desktop had also been upgraded for better video quality and performance, which would likely go a long way toward making the app easier to use, possibly adding to users in Viber's arsenal.

As usage increased, the company's priority remained the same- introducing features, adding more platforms, and improving Viber with every new version, www.trutower.com reported Viber CEO Talmon Marco as saying.

He added, this was exactly what the company had done with the new Viber Desktop, and the company was really excited for our users to try it out.

(See: Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten to buy instant messaging app Viber for $900 mn).

 

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