Viber Business Model - How do Viber Make Money

Viber is a free application available for almost all the platforms. This app has been downloaded for more than 200 millions times and is being called Skype Killer. Viber now offers its free application for iOS Platform (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch), Android Mobiles, Windows based mobiles, Blackberry OS, Nokia Symbian, Bada mobiles and now it offers PC app as well. Viber offers free calls and multi media messages between two viber users (doesn't matter on which device you are using this app).

Not only is the Viber application free, but it does not even charges for calls and text messages. Infact its PC application offers video calls which are also free. That's not all Viber does not even show any ads on its app, so no advertisement revenue. The question is if everything is free and not even powered by ads so how does it make money, what exactly is Viber's business model. Before we go into the details about its business model, lets see what is it costs (expenses).

• Calls are made using internet connection (does not require any kind of hardware infrastructure), so these can be free. 
• Viber is simply a software developed by a team - this effectively means team salary cost, research cost, marketing cost and many other expenses. This may seem less but trust me it is a good amount of money. Effectively its like running a product based software company.

Read - Viber Problems and their solution

As found on the forbes website -

So far, his company has no venture capital investors and has yet to book any revenue. In fact its founder and CEO, Talmon Marco, said friends and family of the Cyprus-based company’s founders had helped put $20 million into the company. “It’s not a cheap operation,” he said, adding that Viber employs 120 people, the workforce being divided between Israel and Minsk, Belarus.

“We are going to generate revenue later this year, through value-added services,”  Marco said. Viber will not charge a fee to download its application or for basic services, and Marco says there are no plans to introduce ads. Instead he is opting for a freemium-model to make cash, with extra services such as “premium stickers” for messaging.

So though Viber is not making money and it is definitely a great application (and a good business model) with potential to make huge amount of money. Infact if you compare this with Facebook (which also started with offering social profile and connecting with friends), Viber looks pretty similar. Its all upto Viber to decide what their next step would be to generate money.

My List of Ideas - Viber Model to Make Money

1. Someday it Viber may decide to charge money for application. If it starts asking for $1 per annum (which is pretty cheap), it would start making 200 million USD per year (growing)
2. Launching premium services just like Skype
1. Viber Out - Make calls and sms to normal mobile (non viber users) at cheap international rates
2. Viber Video Conference - video chat with multiple people at low cost
3. Viber for Business - Start charging business users with more features like desktop sharing, conference calls, call recording etc..
3. Advertisement on the viber app - this should generate huge amount of money
4. Integration with third party software like Facebook and Twitter - Ask them for money or display ads on these third party websites
5. Online calls from Viber - PC to Phone without software download. This will generate huge traffic on viber website, just display ads on website
6. Launch its own social media website just like Facebook
7. Sell Viber to big players like Google, Microsoft or even Facebook or may be a mobile company like Samsung
8. Viber pre installed on mobiles like Samsung - Ask Samsung for money
9. Viber could tie up with mobile career like Virgin Mobiles, ATnT or any other depending upon the country (may be Airtel in India) - offer data plans and free calls plan. They can share the generated revenue.