25 days, 550k installs: a prank app where an idol video-calls you. How a Vietnamese publisher reran an old template

Live Idol Video Call & Chat, from a Vietnamese utility-app publisher, makes it look like Jungkook, Lisa, Messi, or Santa is calling you, so you can scare your friends. It launched in Oct 12, and by Nov 5 it had reached 553K Google Play installs, adding 458K in a week. It charted in the Entertainment Top Free chart in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and South Africa, with its best spot in the top 15. But it's not a new idea: the top product in the same template launched 2024 years ago and has 32.1M installs, and more than twenty new skins of the same template have appeared this year.

A five-star review I can't read

On Nov 3, a user whose name looks Nigerian left a five-star review on its Google Play page with just two words: "edoboy billions". 23 people tapped "Helpful". The developer replied the same day: "Could you tell us what 'edoboy billions' means, or what issue you ran into? We'll pass it to the team." A publisher email followed.

Scrolling up, there are Nov 4 reviews like "nice app" and "good". The developer replies to every one, always ending with the same line: "Please share with friends and invite them to download."

The review page pretty much sums up the app: users come from places like Nigeria, India, and Saudi Arabia, install it, and leave without saying much. The developer treats every review as a chance to get new installs. As of Nov 6 it had 1,909 ratings with an average of 4.8, and only 1 ratings for every 290 installs. Its first 196 ratings were all five stars, with not one four-star (Google Play store page, 10-29).

What it is

A prank app that simulates incoming calls, with three main features:

• Fake video calls: pick an idol, set the call to ring now, in a few minutes, or at a scheduled time, and your phone rings on cue. When you answer, the idol talks on screen while your front camera shows in a small window, like a real video call. If you miss it, the idol "calls back". You can also add your own idols: a photo, a name, a number, and a short video.
• Fake chats: write messages the idol supposedly sent, edit the timestamps, add "typing…" indicators and read receipts, replay the chat with per-message typing animations, and hide the input bar for easier screenshots.
• Fake voice calls: set a caller photo, name, and number, then play the idol's voice or a clip you recorded yourself.

The idol lineup includes Jungkook, V, Lisa, Jennie, Rosé, and Nayeon; Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, and The Weeknd; Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi; plus Santa Claus. The store page says it supports 36 languages and ends with a disclaimer: "This app is not affiliated with any person or brand shown… please prank responsibly."

Free to download, with ads. Premium unlocks all idols and themes, removes ads, and removes the limit on custom idols. It's sold as weekly and annual subscriptions or a one-time lifetime purchase, with in-app items from $0.99 to $6.99.

How big it is now

Data from the Google Play store page, 10-29 to 11-06. In recent days it has added roughly 10K–150K per day.

It grew fastest in countries where it charted. In Oct 29 it appeared on the Entertainment Top Free chart in only 5 stores, with its best spot at #112 in Vietnam. In Nov 1 that expanded to 26 stores, and from Nov 4 it held steady at 29. Its Nov 6 positions: #11 in Saudi Arabia, #12 in Turkey, #14 in South Africa, #26 in the UAE, #33 in India, #34 in Vietnam, and #37 in Argentina, Indonesia, and Nigeria; #59 in both the US and UK. From Nov 2 it also charted on the overall app charts in South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Argentina, and Indonesia (ranks #90–#200).

It has never charted on any Top Grossing chart. The money comes mainly from ads. It shipped 4 versions between Oct 26 and Nov 5.

Why this one, and why now

It's not the product

Compared with the category leader, it does have more: scheduled calls, a camera window, callbacks, custom idols, and chat replay, so it's more complete. But in the same week, more than twenty clones of the same template were also growing. A somewhat better feature set doesn't explain why it's ahead.

Behind it is a paid-acquisition machine

The developer account is Daily Tool Labs, and the support site belongs to the Vietnamese publisher PublisherVN (vnpublisher.com), with a developer address in Ho Chi Minh City. The same account also has wallpaper, translation, PDF, and cleaner apps, totaling 13.7M installs. Whichever category takes off, they make more of it.

There's direct evidence of paid acquisition from this publisher: in the Meta Ad Library, a Page called "PDF Reader - Document Scanner" has only 50 likes but has run 331 ads since October 2025, with 20 still running in Nov 6. Its landing pages all point to Daily Tool Labs PDF, translation, and cleaner apps. A small anonymous Page plus pure paid ads is the standard playbook for utility publishers.

The idol app's own ads couldn't be directly found, but the indirect evidence points to paid acquisition: no one on TikTok, X, Reddit, or in the press mentions it, which makes 400K in three days hard to explain organically; the same account's Silly Smile wallpaper app grew 536K the same week; installs cluster in cheap-install markets like Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, India, and Nigeria; and ratings are sparse, which points to low user intent. All of this fits "Google App campaigns or Meta paid acquisition, with ad monetization through AdMob-type networks to recover costs" (inferred).

Store search and charts amplify the traffic

The title and package name stuff in idol, prank, video call, chat, phone, and fun. The package name …idol.prank.video.call.chat.phone.fun nearly copies the category leader. The Play links for it found online include utm_term="live idol video call", showing that people arrive by searching that term. After paid acquisition pushed it onto the Entertainment charts in 29 stores, the charts themselves added another layer of exposure.

It rode the Christmas wave

The screenshots already feature "Call Santa Claus". Halloween had just passed at the end of October, and horror-call pranks got a boost; Christmas is next. BearKUN's Santa Prank Video Call, a similar app, launched in Oct 27 and grew 574K in one week. On TikTok, an account called @santa.prank.call posted a demo of a "Santa calls you" app last Nov 27, and it has 3.9M views to date. This category heats up again every year around 11 and December.

The demand is constant

Searching "idol prank call" on TikTok turns up old videos from the whole category: people recording "BlackPink calls you" with an app, POV clips of "Jungkook calls you at midnight", and a "Messi prank call" video posted in Oct 6 that had 5.04M views and 490K likes by Nov 6. A large share are real paid fan video calls run by Korean talent agencies. Plenty of people want to get a call from an idol, but none of these videos come from this app.

Who it's competing with

Apps with prank or fake call in the title, related to phone calls, that have charted, total 45, 23 of them launched this year, combined 214M installs, and 3.36M new in 7 days. This one is at 458K a week, roughly 14% of the whole category. Most are utility publishers from Vietnam, Turkey, and India using the same template and package names, with new ones every month. Whether iOS has a similar number of clones couldn't be verified; Daily Tool Labs appears to be Android-only.

It hasn't disclosed revenue, no media or social platform has written about it, and almost no one outside knows the product. But this category has already been turned into an assembly line.

If it were you

One-line take: you can learn a factory playbook of "template category + reskins + paid acquisition in emerging markets + ad-based payback", but building another idol call app now will most likely be the 46th of its kind, and that's a poor bet.

Who it suits: small publisher teams that already have Google App campaigns or Meta paid-acquisition accounts, can configure AdMob ad monetization, and can ship several reskinned apps a month. For them, this is just one more category to put on the calendar.

Who it doesn't suit: indie devs with no paid-acquisition experience who are counting on a good product or organic content to bring in users; anyone aiming for long-term retention and subscription revenue; anyone concerned about celebrity likeness risk. Users of this category install, play once, and leave without paying, and they won't stay just because you add features.

How to do it:

• Don't follow the idols, follow the seasons: Santa and Halloween horror calls. The next waves could be Valentine's Day (idol or "boyfriend" calls), and Ramadan and Eid (ad traffic is cheap in the Gulf and charts are easier to reach, though the theme needs to be right; inferred). Build one creative set per holiday and extend the life of one app with reskins.
• Don't use real celebrities: make original characters, anime-style characters, fictional boyfriends and girlfriends, or AI-generated personas, to avoid likeness complaints and takedowns. This is the biggest weakness of the current batch of apps.
• Switch platforms: how crowded this category is on iOS hasn't been verified, so search App Store for "prank call" and "santa call" and check the rating counts before deciding.

How to acquire users: paid acquisition is the main engine. Run Google App campaigns in low-cost markets like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, India, and Indonesia to get into the top 50 of the local Entertainment Top Free chart first, then pick up organic traffic from chart placement and search. Stuff the title and package name with search terms like "prank / video call / fake call / santa". Supplement with face-free demo videos on TikTok; themes like "Santa calls, kid's reaction" have an audience.

Timing: for this Christmas wave you need to launch by mid-November, because the December 25 window closes. Starting now is already late. If you miss it, aim for Valentine's Day and launch by mid-January.

What would mean you read it wrong:

• Its weekly installs dropped back to tens of thousands after late December, which shows it ran on the season and one burst of spend, with no sustainable volume.
• Batches of apps like this have been taken down for using real celebrities, which shows the "idol" line can't last on its own.
• If you spend on cheap markets for a week or two and ad revenue doesn't recover your acquisition cost, the business depends on publisher scale and account history, which a small team won't have.

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Data and sources: Google Play store page, charts, and reviews (10-29 to 11-06); the Meta Ad Library entries for the "PDF Reader - Document Scanner" Page (11-06); similar apps' creatives in the Google Ads Transparency Center; search results on TikTok for "idol prank call" and "santa video call prank app" (11-06 as of); vnpublisher.com and its privacy page. Places marked "inferred" or "est." are inference and estimates.