Viber looks to challenge Skype with backing from Japanese internet giant

Let's face it: The tech industry is starting to get used to big-name companies acquiring young, relatively successful startups. To wit, such was the case for Viber, a Tel Aviv-based service that lets you use an app to communicate through phone calls and instant messages. Viber's acquisition by Rakuten, a Japanese e-commerce and internet giant, came after the platform welcomed more than 300 million users worldwide since 2010, making it one of the most popular applications across iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. That growth, along with its flourishing appeal, have made Viber a real threat to services like Skype -- though, on the messaging front, it is still trying to catch up to WhatsApp, which is at 500 million active users and counting. But despite all of this, Viber still wants to keep growing, and it plans to use Rakuten's resources to help it get to where it wants to be.
Viber's CEO Talmon Marco told me that life at his company hasn't changed since joining the Rakuten family: "We operate the same way [we] did before. This means we continue to have fun, develop our product and introduce new and exciting updates." And keeping the Viber apps full of useful featuresis something that's very important to Marco, which is why they're constantly being updated on every platform. For its part, Rakuten isn't new to the acquisition game: Back in 2012, the company completed its purchase of Kobo's e-reading business. In a recent interview with Re/code, Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten's co-founder and CEO, said spending $900 million on Viber was a "no-brainer," citing the popularity of similar services as the driving force behind the acquisition.

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