Viber Will Continue to Focus on the “Experience,” the “Capabilities,” and the “Fun” This Year

The small team at Viber has certainly been hard at work on growing the popular messaging platform, and this year will undoubtedly be as full of surprises and updates as last year was.

Last year saw the launch of Viber voice capability for the very first time on Microsoft’s mobile OS. It also saw the unfortunate demise of the planned BlackBerry 10 release as that platform continues to struggle. The Windows 8 version was released in mid-December, giving the new “Metro UI” Live Tiles a spin on PCs and tablets.

Viber’s popularity hit a high note last may as it exceeded 200 million users. While the company hasn’t released hard numbers on the number of active users since then, it’s safe to say the app has likely seen user growth since then.

Of course, arguably the biggest highlight of last year was the release of the sticker store, bringing Viber into the monetization arena. The sticker store could even be the beginnings of a much bigger platform, with the possibility of games and other media possible sometime in the future, simlar to what we’ve seen on LINE and KakaoTalk.

“[Viber will] continue to provide the best possible experience”

This year, we’ve already been given one highly-demanded feature, but what about what’s coming next?

“[O]ur focus, both high level and low level, is to continue to provide the best possible experience, add more capabilities to our messaging, make Viber more fun and useful and support any platform we currently do not support,” Viber CEO Talmon Marco told TruTower.

So the experience improvements will definitely continue, and Viber appears to be focusing on messaging capabilities rather than expanding beyond that at this time. The final portion of that statement is interesting, as it implies that a version for BlackBerry 10 could still be in the cards, and maybe even other platforms beyond that.

Of course, only time will tell, and we’ll be sure to keep everyone up to date on the latest Viber news and changes as the year progresses. What do you hope to see from Viber this year? Sound off in the comments or the forums!