Pakistani province looks set to ban Skype, Viber and maybe other messaging apps
One Pakistani province looks set to ban Skype and maybe other messaging apps, the Tribune reports today. The southern province of Sindh will block VoIP chat apps like Skype and Viber for a period of...
View ArticleMessaging app Viber is now available in Indonesian language
Israel-made messaging app Viber is leaping into Indonesia today as it’s now available in the Indonesian language on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. Interestingly, while the former three...
View ArticleChat apps like Whatsapp, Line, and KakaoTalk are cool but Viber is the real...
Anh-Minh Do, editor at Tech In Asia, will be interview Viber CEO Talmon Marco on stage at Startup Asia Jakarta on November 22nd.
View ArticleViber goes Asian, adds a sticker store to compete with Line, KakaoTalk, and...
Viber goes to war with KakaoTalk, Line, and WeChat with a new sticker store. In other words, they wanna make money off of stickers like their Asian competitors.
View ArticleThe chat app battle is no battle, it’s just more toys for adults
The chat app battle is a large focus for folks watching Asia's internet evolution, but it's being framed naively. It's actually not a battle, it's something else.
View ArticleViber reports 8 million users in Philippines and 8 million in Vietnam too
Viber is growing very fast in Asia, with now over 8 million users in Vietnam and 8 million users in the Philippines.
View ArticleViber’s CEO insists its still ‘open season’ for messaging apps to dominate Asia
Viber, the messaging app founded in 2010 by Israeli entrepreneur Talmon Marco, has steadily emerged from the enormous pack of mobile messengers to become one of the stronger leaders in Asian markets...
View Article5 ways that social media rocked the Philippines in 2013
Facebook is still growing in Asia with over 351 million active users at the last count. The Philippines, contributes more than 30 million people to that Facebook Asia number. But for Filipinos,...
View ArticleWill Appota and VNG go head-to-head in 2014?
VNG and Appota, two very different companies are about to converge in 2014 in mobile distribution. Next year is going to be a battleground.
View Article10 highlights of Indonesia’s tech industry in 2013
Let’s look back at what the Indonesian tech industry went through last year. It’s not just a history lesson, as it also points the way forward to new trends in Indonesia in the new year. Indonesia now...
View ArticleIt’s time for messaging apps to quit the bullshit numbers and tell us how...
One of the biggest trends of the last few years is messaging apps. Dozens of startups and major web companies have leapt into this social space, and hundreds of millions of people around the world –...
View ArticleViber was the enigma of the mobile messaging wars. Why did Rakuten buy it for...
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce firm, will purchase Viber, the Cyprus-based mobile messaging startup for $900 million. The purchase marks a major development...
View ArticleAfter Rakuten acquisition, Viber reveals it has 100 million active users
Earlier today, the popular messaging app Viber revealed it has been acquired by Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce titan. The $900 million deal has just been confirmed by Rakuten (JSD:4755), which means...
View ArticleRakuten wants to see Viber getting a million new users per day
Last month, Rakuten (JSD:4755) acquired Viber messaging app in a $900 million deal as the Japanese ecommerce titan tries to diversify and be more social. Today, Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani spoke out...
View ArticleViber reports 12 million users in Vietnam, but a local rival is surprisingly...
Yesterday, VNG announced that it has hit over 10 million registered users on its chat app Zalo, up from three million users from July last year. In less than one year, the scrappy mobile project under...
View ArticleDespite WhatsApp’s dominance in India, investors still bet on local chat apps...
Indian instant messaging app Hike just received $14 million in funding from Bharti Softbank, according to the Economic Times. The app reports 15 million registered users, 80 percent of them in its home...
View ArticleViber has at least 100M ‘concurrent online users’ at any point in time
Viber trials WhatsApp and WeChat, but is ahead of KakaoTalk. No word on Rakuten integration yet.
View ArticleMyanmar’s new mobile internet users embrace Android smartphones, pick Viber...
Half of Myanmar’s mobile internet users came online during the past 12 months. They're using Android smartphones and checking out messaging apps.
View ArticleRakuten just launched a $100M fund for startups. Here’s why the company is...
As Alibaba prepares for its IPO and Tencent aggressively pushes its WeChat messenger all over the world, it’s easy for folks in the west to forget that there’s another Asian internet giant gunning for...
View ArticleThe new frontiers of Vietnam’s premier chat app: VNG’s Zalo
VNG has made millions off of its desktop gaming platform, but now it faces the challenge of transitioning everything to mobile. How will this $1 billion Vietnamese company make it happen?
View ArticleWassup WhatsApp? Viber claims an early lead in Myanmar with 5 million...
Viber is claiming an early lead ahead of all its messaging app rivals in the newly opened up country of Myanmar.
View ArticleRakuten: Viber has 608 million registered accounts, is the future of our company
Viber's company's growth comes at a time when Rakuten wants to make the messaging service an essential component of the larger conglomerate.
View ArticleThis father-son duo just made free voice calls a reality
What they did was to create an app that allows quality calls to be made even on 2G networks.
View ArticlePicocandy lets you add your own stickers store with two lines of code...
Even established messaging apps like Viber have been using content from PicoCandy.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Following messaging app crackdown, Viber appears to be inaccessible for some...
It’s been a tough year for popular messaging apps in China. Japan’s Line and Korea’s KakaoTalk have been blocked by the Great Firewall, along with photo-sharing app Instagram. Today it looks Chinese...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Surprise! Viber surpasses Line in monthly active users
Viber received a prominent spot in Rakuten’s latest financial report and for good reason. The messaging app, which has struggled to escape Line’s shadow, is finally standing in the sun. With 209...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2014 in review – Japan’s biggest startup deals
The premier of Softbank’s Pepper, the emotionally intelligent robot, was a major storyline this year. Tech in Asia said konnichiwa to Japan in 2014, setting up shop and holding Tokyo’s very own Startup...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Viber follows footsteps of Line and WeChat with launch of game series
Chat and VoIP app Viber announced today the launch of Viber Games, which, as the name implies, will integrate several games into the app. The launch lineup consists of three seen-it-before lookalikes...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Viber’s games are a disappointing start to its social gaming ambitions
As a messaging app, Viber has been slow to hop onto the games publishing bandwagon, pioneered in recent years by KakaoTalk, Line, and WeChat. But yesterday Viber released the Viber Games platform,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Indian telco wants users to pay extra for using Skype, Viber
The Indian Government will look into Airtel’s plan to charge separately for VoIP (voice calls over Internet) services offered by apps like Skype, Viber, and Line. According to a statement on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
India’s Airtel puts on hold controversial plan to charge extra for making...
Indian telecom company Airtel will temporarily withdraw the decision to charge a higher rate for making online voice calls on its data network. Airtel last week announced a new plan to charge customers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Viber hits 236M monthly active users, still searching for monetization
The latest Viber update comes courtesy of Rakuten’s most recent quarterly earning report. The messaging service gained more new monthly active users (MAU) than Line did since its last report. Viber...
View ArticleFacebook, WhatsApp, Viber blocked ‘indefinitely’ in Bangladesh
Decision comes in the wake of 'security reasons'.
View ArticleClik here to view.
How much does India love messaging apps? Not as much as you’d think.
Photo credit: DigitalDeconstruction . Last year, a report came out saying Android users in India spend 47 percent of their time on smartphones on communication apps. Considering the average Indian...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It’s time for messaging apps to form the ‘anti-Facebook alliance’
Selfies are inseparable from the messaging app boom. Photo credit: Ellen De Vos. “Facebook Celebrates Forcing 1 Billion of its Existing Users to Download Messenger,” zinged Gizmodo a few months back...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why in-app stickers are the marketing arsenal brands can’t avoid
Move over, SMS and text-based emoticons. It’s the era of mobile messenger apps and stickers. Mobile messaging apps are here to stay. According to Statista, 75 percent of global internet users...
View Article
