{"id":60605,"date":"2014-02-14T13:09:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T11:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=60605"},"modified":"2025-07-02T00:52:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:52:52","slug":"games-could-be-coming-to-viber-after-rakuten-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/games-could-be-coming-to-viber-after-rakuten-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Games could be coming to Viber after Rakuten deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.en.softonic.com\/b\/viber\">Viber<\/a> has been bought by Rakuten, the &#8216;Japanese Amazon&#8217;, which also owns Play.com and Wuaki.tv.<\/p>\n<p>The acquisition could mean significant changes for Viber, the free calls and messaging app. It has a huge user base already at 300 million, but if it was linked with Rakuten&#8217;s 225 million users in Japan, it could eclipse competitor <a href=\"http:\/\/features.en.softonic.com\/b\/line\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LINE<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is apparently what the company has in mind. Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani noted that Viber already has a great sticker market, and lots of potential as a gaming platform.<\/p>\n<p>This puts Viber firmly in place as a competitor to LINE in Japan and worldwide. Stickers and games have been hugely successful for LINE, whereas Viber so far has focused more on being a good VOIP and messaging app. We can expect that to change, with more of a focus on games and other premium features that have been a huge success for LINE.<\/p>\n<h4>RELATED STORIES<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.en.softonic.com\/viber-for-windows-phone-8-updated-with-better-notifications-and-stickers\">Viber for Windows Phone 8 updated with better notifications and stickers<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/features.en.softonic.com\/viber-out-reminds-us-that-the-world-is-far-from-being-online\">Viber Out reminds us that the world is far from being online<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.en.softonic.com\/line-messenger-300-million-users\">LINE messaging app reaches 300 million users<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/h4>\n<p>[Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2014\/02\/13\/japanese-internet-giant-rakuten-acquires-viber-for-900m\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">TechCrunch<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Viber has been bought by Rakuten, the &#8216;Japanese Amazon&#8217;, which also owns Play.com and Wuaki.tv. The acquisition could mean significant changes for Viber, the free calls and messaging app. It has a huge user base already at 300 million, but if it was linked with Rakuten&#8217;s 225 million users in Japan, it could eclipse competitor &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/games-could-be-coming-to-viber-after-rakuten-deal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Games could be coming to Viber after Rakuten deal&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":1},"categories":[],"tags":[2646],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-60605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-app-subdomain-redirectionviber"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2019"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331337,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60605\/revisions\/331337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60605"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=60605"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=60605"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=60605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}