VietNamNet Bridge – BKAV, a “rookie” in the OTT (over-the-top) app market, has made an eloquent statement that Btalk, its newly launched OTT app, will overthrow Viber, a very favorite app for Vietnamese at this moment, to become the most popular OTT app in Vietnam.

One month after VNG, the developer of Zalo, announced that Zalo had attracted10 million users, BKAV, known as an Internet security service provider, stirred up the public when it introduced its own OTT app, Btalk.

Deputy Chair of BKAV, Nguyen Tu Hoang, at the Btalk launching ceremony, said that the mission of the OTT app is to replace Viber in Vietnam and reach out to the world market in the near future.

Viber, an OTT app with 280 million users worldwide, is leading the Vietnamese market with 12 million users in Vietnam. A Viber representative office was set up in HCM City earlier this year.

What advantages does Btalk have over Viber?

Btalk, the newcomer, might have learned a lesson from Zalo, also a Vietnamese-developed OTT app. Zalo did not succeed when it hit the market.

However, its developers later realized the problems of foreign OTT apps, which tend not to operate well on Vietnam’s Internet. The weak points of the rivals have brought an advantage to Zalo: its app, which allows one to send messages stably on all infrastructure bases, including 2G, 2.5G, 3G or WiFi, has convinced many users to switch over.

Btalk, as announced by its developers, has a strong point in that it allows one to make calls from many different regions in the world with, high voice quality.

Quang also said that BKAV’s team has found a means to escape from the interception by mobile network operators. This means that mobile network operators, which lose revenue to OTT apps, won’t be able to block the OTT app.

A telecom expert said he is not sure if Btalk really has the features it advertises, but if true, Btalk will have great advantages in its competition with existing OTT apps, because the unstable voice service quality and the intervention of mobile network operators are the biggest inconveniences to users.

Another expert commented that if Btalk really has such outstanding features, it can be a valuable item, and that its developers can sell Btalk to Viettel, the military telecom group, which plans to jump into the OTT app market but has failed to buy Zalo from VNG.

A series of flaws were identified by Btalk users right after the app turned up in Google Play’s “market”. The members of GenK, a technology website, complained that they had to change the language of their smartphones before being able to use the Vietnamese version of Btalk.

In reply, Hoang said that Btalk has both the Vietnamese and English formats. The language to be activated will depend on the language of the smart phones. If a smartphone runs on Vietnamese, Btalk runs in Vietnamese mode automatically.

The investment capital of hundreds of billions of dong in Btalk announced by BKAV has raised doubts in the public. Meanwhile, some OTT app developers said it takes some VND3 billion only to develop one app.

K. Chi