Rakuten Viber, a leading apps for free and easy communication, has recorded an overall increase in app usage across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region in 2020. It was a year marked by massive changes in how people communicate and interact with each other as caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the Asia Pacific region, the application ended the year with a 421% growth of users in December 2020. In the same period, Viber also recorded a 509% growth in messages sent and a massive surge in messages sent to groups.
Viber’s Communities Feature experienced the most robust growth in Community Messages Sent. These 2020 growth numbers were based on the data recorded in the same period in 2019.
All of these makes 2020 one of Viber’s strongest years in its 10-year history as specific markets in the APAC region like Bangladesh also logged notable growth rates when data from January 2020 and December 2020 are compared.
In Bangladesh, Viber has witnessed a 72% growth in activations versus last year. Based on the numbers logged on Viber, it seemed that Bangladeshis spent more time on Viber Communities last year as users who viewed Communities jumped up to 149% and messages sent to Communities grew by 116%.
They were also texting, audio calls, video calling, and using chat extensions more. Viber has witnessed an increase in Video Calls by 40% and usage of Chat Extension by 47%.
To continuously provide its users with top-notch service and enhance their app experience, Viber in 2020 also introduced new features such as My Notes that enabled users to sync their to-do lists and media across all their devices.