Rakuten go straight to the apps. The Japanese e-commerce giant has announced the purchase, for 900 million dollars, of Viber Media, parent company of the homonymous application for chatting and calling via the Internet (VoIP).
A confirmation of the company's desire to grow beyond national borders. In fact, it is not the first operation involving a foreign company (Viber is Cypriot): in 2012 Rakuten invested in the Californian Pinterest and in 2011 it acquired the e-books of the Canadian Kobo. The acquisition of Viber allows the Japanese company to expand its business portfolio and diversify its products.
Who I am. Rakuten provides not only online reseller services, but also e-readers and financial services, and owns a Japanese baseball team. It generates approximately 400 billion yen in annual revenue from its core businesses: an online shopping mall, a web-based travel service, and an Internet bank. However most of its revenue and millions of subscribers are in Japan. Rakuten has been trying to grow outside of Japan for years and now has a strong chance to leverage Viber's customer base of 300 million users in 193 countries.
Viber, founded in 2010 by Israeli entrepreneur Talmon Marco, recently launched a desktop instant messaging service that allows users to call the mobile phones of non-Viber users.
Great satisfaction for the CEO of Rakuten, Hiroshi Mikitani: “I am tremendously enthusiastic to welcome Viber into the Rakuten family – he declared -. Viber offers the highest quality, most consistent and most affordable VoIP and messaging experience. In addition, Viber has recently introduced a new market, that of stickers, and has enormous potential as a gaming platform.
