Why do 175 million people use Viber?

Why do 175 million people use Viber? It’s not because the over-the-top (OTT) messaging service is free. According to Viber CEO Talmon Marco, it’s because of the experience.

Around 70,000 people are attending MWC this year

Speaking at Mobile World Congress 2013, Marco gave the example of Monaco, where almost 90 percent of that country’s residents use Viber. With four times the average per capita income of the United States, Monaco’s residents aren’t poor. Nor are they particular young; Monaco’s median age is just under 50. And SMS services provided by the local service provider are free.

But still Monaco residents are flooding to Viber because of the services it provides: group messaging, delivery confirmation, high-quality photo sharing, stickers and emoticons, the “is typing” indication, as well as location sharing.

“Consumers want innovation,” Marco said, and so the rich, middle-aged residents of Monaco want to use Viber, not because they can’t afford to send a regular SMS, but because they want to take part in something new and fresh.

The only OTT representative on the MWC panel discussing the future of communications, Marco argued that service providers should work with OTT players and use their services to differentiate themselves and build customer stickiness. Marco said he “would love to offer Viber calls at high quality through cooperation with a carrier.” Not only would this help carriers differentiate, he said, they might even be able to charge for such a service.

Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann, who earlier had dismissed the OTT paradigm – You [the service provider] invest, we [the OTT player] take the profit – as unsustainable, did not rule out working with OTT players:

“OTT is taking SMS/voice revenue – it’s a fact of life, we need to deal with it…we’re willing to sit down tomorrow with OTT players. We don’t see it as a conflict; we see it as an opportunity.”

If service providers are to succeed in the future, Obermann concluded, they have to become “much smarter” and embrace innovation by partnering.

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