In January 2016, Viber surpassed WhatsApp in Russia, with about 50 million users. Viber is one of the more popular messenger applications in Russia. As of 2018, Viber has an over 70 percent penetration rate in the CIS and CEE regions, but only 15 percent in North America. It is also popular in Iraq, Libya and Nepal. Viber is particularly popular in Eastern Europe, being the most downloaded messaging app on Android in Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine as of 2016. At the same time there were 30 million users in the United States, 28 million in Russia and 18 million in Brazil. India was the largest market for Viber as of December 2014 with 33 million registered users, the fifth most popular instant messenger in the country. The Viber messenger is very popular in Greece, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and some Asian markets. According to Statista, there are 260 million monthly active users as of January 2019. Market share Īs of December 2016, Viber had 800 million registered users. Barcelona since Rakuten partnered with the football club in 2017. Viber has been the official "communication channel" of F.C. Its legal name remains Viber Media, S.à r.l.
In July 2017 the corporate name of Viber Media was changed to Rakuten Viber and a new wordmark logo was introduced. ĭjamel Agaoua became Viber Media CEO in February 2017, replacing co-founder Marco who left in 2015. At that sale price, the founders each realized over 30 times return on their investments. The sale of Viber earned the Shabtai family ( Benny, his brother Gilad, and Gilad's son Ofer) some $500 million from their 55.2% stake in the company. On February 13, 2014, Rakuten announced they had acquired Viber Media for $900 million. According to Viber, no sensitive user information was accessed. On July 24, 2013, Viber's support system was defaced by the Syrian Electronic Army. They invested $20 million in the company, which had 120 employees as of May 2013. The company was originally funded by individual investors, described by Marco as "friends and family". It began doing so in 2013, via user payments for Viber Out voice calling and the Viber graphical messaging "sticker store". In its first two years of availability, Viber did not generate revenues.
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Marco commented that Viber allows instant calling and synchronization with contacts because the ID is the user's cell number, unlike Skype which is modeled after a "buddy list" requiring registration and a password. Sani Maroli and Ofer Smocha soon joined the company as well. The company was run from Israel, with much of its development outsourced to Belarus in order to lower labor costs. Marco and Magazinnik are also co-founders of the P2P media and file-sharing client iMesh. Viber Media was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2010 by Marco and Magazinnik, who are friends from the Israel Defense Forces where they were chief information officers. Trying to overcome this issue, Marco turned to his friend Igor Magazinnik to find a solution. Living apart but communicating all the time led to very expensive phone bills. Co-founder, Talmon Marco's girlfriend at the time was based in Hong Kong while he was living out in New York City. Viber was founded in 2010 to solve the problem of long distance relationships. Viber's offices are located in London, Manila, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, and Tokyo. Since 2017, its corporate name has been Rakuten Viber.
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The software was developed in 2010 by Cyprus-based Viber Media, which was bought by Rakuten in 2014. As of 2018, there are over a billion registered users on the network. In addition to instant messaging it allows users to exchange media such as images and video records, and also provides a paid international landline and mobile calling service called Viber Out. Users are registered and identified through a cellular telephone number, although the service is accessible on desktop platforms without needing mobile connectivity. Viber, or Rakuten Viber, is a cross-platform voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) software application owned by Japanese multinational company Rakuten, provided as freeware for the Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux platforms.