Viber for Android Launches with Some Serious Advantages and a Whole Lotta Users
By: Hillel Fuld
Viber, one of the most solid VoIP clients for iPhone, has just announced the release of its Android app. Of course, there are many apps that allow iPhone and Android users to talk for free, but no one does it quite like Viber. Between the deep integration with your phone’s address book, the ability to get calls even when the app is not running, and the absolutely unprecedented voice quality, it is no wonder Viber has achieved such tremendous success in such a short time period.
Viber also offers free texting to its users and supports both texting and calling to anyone who has the app installed over Wifi and 3G. As mentioned, the new Android app launches today after a long wait, and initial reviews are overwhelmingly positive.
The company also announced that based on the last 30 days, the app has over 12 million active users and call traffic of over one billion minutes per quarter. ”This is an incredibly exciting day for us,” said Talmon Marco, Viber CEO. “We have been looking forward to launching our Android app, especially after having received a staggering number of requests from Android users asking us to bring Viber to the Android market. Our latest user numbers are the best indicator of how much our users love to talk and send messages for free with Viber.”
In just seven months since its release, Viber has over 20 million registered users who currently talk on Viber for 11 million minutes every day, with an average of 6 minutes per call. Impressive stats by any standard. The new Android app has been in a beta testing stage for months with over 50,000 testers and it includes some features that are exclusive to the Android platform. These include:
- Full call screen notification when a Viber call is received
- Push notification for new text messages, which lets users respond without opening the app
- Tighter integration with the phone, including a full view of your phone’s call log from within the app
- The ability to replace the phone’s dialer with the Viber one, which will enable users to make free calls by default
This is big news for Android users, but let’s not forget that iPhone users should be happy about this too. I mean, what iPhone user does not have one or two (or a hundred) friends who try to bring them over to the dark side of Android at least once a day? Now iPhone and Android users can talk for free and this brings Viber into the category of cross-platform communication apps like Skype, Tango, and Qik.
