'It's a cool app, but they haven't really innovated themselves. Marco also took a sideswipe at the one of the dominant over-the-top (OTT) messaging clients, WhatsApp, for not adding more features over the last few years and concentrating primarily on the smooth-running of its group-messaging service. Viber claims to have a wide geographic footprint but some of its biggest user bases are in Southeast Asia, Hungary and Ireland. If you're looking at the trend today for the younger generation, they use Facebook less and messaging more.' 'The demarcation between social and communication doesn't exist. 'We do look at Viber eventually as a platform,' said Marco.

Marco says there are other plans for revenue-generating services, including the possibility of augmenting Viber into a platform to buy and sell third-party applications, but he would not give further details. Instead he is opting for a freemium-model to make cash, with extra services such as 'premium stickers' for messaging. Viber will not charge a fee to download its application or for basic services, and Marco says there are no plans to introduce ads. 'We are going to generate revenue later this year, through value-added services,' Marco said. 'It's not a cheap operation,' he said, adding that Viber employs 120 people, the workforce being divided between Israel and Minsk, Belarus. 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. So far, his company has no venture capital investors and has yet to book any revenue. Marco said Viber had spent the more than a year gutting its back-end system to achieve new features like device-to-desktop call transfers. Viber says audio-file sending is on its way, as is video calling through its mobile app. It also unveiled a number of new features, including a beta version of desktop-to-desktop video calls and the ability to send short videos. The company also announced it had hit more than 200 million registered users, putting in the big leagues with mobile messaging services WhatsApp (more than 200 million active users globally) and WeChat (roughly 300 million, largely in China). 'With Skype you can't transfer a call,' said Marco. That means if you call someone on Viber and they have both the desktop and mobile app open, both devices will ring and they can transfer a call between the two. Viber does not require a user ID - users register with their mobile phone number.

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