Viber goes Asian, adds a sticker store to compete with Line, KakaoTalk, and WeChat

From WeChat to Line to KakaoTalk, everybody in the Asian chat app market has stickers. On top of this, stickers are a huge source of revenue for the chat app giants. Just this August, Line reported that 27 percent of its revenues came from stickers. That’s 27 percent of its $100.7 million in revenue. It’s no wonder that today Viber is announcing it’s entering the sticker store battle with its own stickers. It’s Viber 4.0.

WhatsApp hasn’t stated outright that it won’t introduce stickers, but given its relatively featureless user experience, it probably won’t be doing so anytime soon. Whatsapp, which gains revenues the old fashioned way – getting users to pay for the app on a first-time basis or yearly subscription – may be feeling the need very soon to switch over. Why? Because Viber is one of the fastest growing chat apps in the world.

Viber’s CEO, Talmon Marco, who we’ll also be interviewing at Startup Asia Jakarta this month, says their team is also adding other key features that will keep them competitive:

This version of Viber is all about expressing yourself in more fun, exciting ways. Our new Sticker Market offers over 1,000 unique, fun, expressive characters, many of which were designed specifically for our users in Asia. Also, we are the first of the major messaging services to add Live Push To Talk, streamed instantly between users.

Along with the 4.0 update, Viber will add a host of new features including:

• Message forwarding to groups or contacts
• Customizing backgrounds
• Group conversations with over 100 participants
• Optimization for Android tablets
• Messaging on Viber while on a call
• Instant voice messaging (the new push to talk that Talmon mentioned)
• And the sticker store with over 1,000 stickers

Talmon’s final announcement for the day is that Viber also has 15 million registers users in India. Of course, this is still behind Whatsapp’s 25 million monthly active users in India, but at the very least shows that the app is making its way to Indian smartphones.

On the Asian side of things, WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk, Asia’s biggest sticker store-centric chat apps, will be raising their eyebrows at Viber’s latest announcement. WeChat has over 236 million active users, Line has over 280 million registered users, and KakaoTalk has over 100 million registered users.

Viber has over 200 million registered users worldwide.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)