Based on the financial report by Rakuten, Viber has bested Line in regards to the active members that use the app monthly. Viber had 209 active users in October 2014, while only 170 users actively used Line. Viber had 449 million total unique IDS, while Line had 560 million.
Viber at the same time is doing a better job of spreading their services across the world, with 12 percent of smartphone users using the app. Line has only 10 percent of the market. Viber seems to be able undoubtedly increase their revenue within the next months.
While Viber continues to see the number of users that are active on the app each month rise, Rakuten didn’t purchase the app for $900 million for it to just be a popular app.
China Blocked Viber
As the number of Viber users keeps going up, Viber has been blocked in China. Viber is blocked for only 67 percent of their fans in China. With many of the users reporting that they are able to have no problems still accessing Viber. A TechCrunch writer, Romain Dillet, believed that Viber is not working in China, as he tried to connect and send messages but couldn’t.
This is in agreement with what was reported by TechInAsia, in which many could not connect to the official website of Viber when using the Chinese ISP. Many users reported that when using the Unicom 3G network, Viber was working from China; however this can not be confirmed.
China is well known for blocking applications for messaging, including Instagram, Line, and KaKaoTalk. China also is the same way with social networks such as Google, SnapChat, Taptalk, Facebook, Twitter, and many more.
Apple services for now are still functioning as there have been no problems with iMessage. Viber was not really that popular in China before Line was blocked. Then many moved to Viber, however if the app continues to stay blocked, many will move on to another app.