Tag: Rakuten

Amazon Japan’s Counterattacks To Rakuten Books

Amazon Japan v.s. Japan’s local Rakuten battle was recently well covered on TechCrunch (by our buddy Serkan Toto, of course). Amazon is doing pretty good localization on their main part, books, but draining duel against Rakuten in many shopping categories. Amazon Japan’s shipping fee 300 yen (3.3 USD) has been waived if a customer purchases… Continue reading Amazon Japan’s Counterattacks To Rakuten Books

Election Campaigning On The Net: When Does Law Catch Up With Social Trends?

Prior to the general election scheduled at the end of this month, Rakuten publicized a letter from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party(LDP) and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan(DPJ) in response to the question by 60 Japanese business leaders including Rakuten’s CEO Hiroshi Mikitani. The leaders asked both parties about their policies on six subjects… Continue reading Election Campaigning On The Net: When Does Law Catch Up With Social Trends?

First China, then the US: Japan’s No. 1 online shopping mall Rakuten (again) outlines plans to go global

Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and president of Japan’s leading online shopping mall Rakuten, has never made a bis secret of his seeing Rakuten as a global brand (here is some detailed background). This is especially interesting since Rakuten is the biggest “purely” Japanese web company there is (its market cap exceeds $8 billion currently and SoftBank… Continue reading First China, then the US: Japan’s No. 1 online shopping mall Rakuten (again) outlines plans to go global

Rakuten To Start P2P Online Political Donations For The First Time In Japan

Rakuten, one of Japan’s e-commerce giants, announced it would start a service enlightening voters on political participation in late July. The website accepts credit cards to donate your money to politicians whom you support. In the previous U.S. presidential election last year, Barack Obama carried a large amount of money from individual fundraisers on the… Continue reading Rakuten To Start P2P Online Political Donations For The First Time In Japan

Kenko.com and Wellnet Sues Japanese Government around Drug e-Commerce Ban

Today, two online pharmacy stores Kenko.com and Wellnet had a press conference to announce that they had filed a lawsuit against Japanese government. They claims that the ban of online and postal drug sale, which is going to be effective from June 1st, is against the constitution. After we reported Rakuten, Kenko.com and others claimed… Continue reading Kenko.com and Wellnet Sues Japanese Government around Drug e-Commerce Ban

Two Broadband Video Streaming Sites To Be Merged To Survive

   Yahoo Japan[J] announced Tuesday it would buy 51% stake in Gyao[J] which is the free broadband video streaming service and has been wholly owned by Japan’s largest cable music broadcaster USEN.   Yahoo Japan will buy Gyao’s 4,998 shares for USD5.3M, and merge Gyao and Yahoo Douga (Yahoo Japan’s free video streaming service) together this… Continue reading Two Broadband Video Streaming Sites To Be Merged To Survive

Rakuten to start PHS service in April

Rakuten[J],  Japan’s largest e-commerce player, unveiled that it is planning to start a PHS (personal handy-phone system) service as an MVNO (or mobile virtual network operator) for its corporate users this coming April. Jointly with Fusion Communications, and under a roaming agreement with Japanese PHS operator Willcom, Rakuten intends to provide free mobile phone service… Continue reading Rakuten to start PHS service in April

Japanese No.1 E-Commerce site “Rakuten” started multilingual item search

Rakuten, the largest E-Commerce player in Japan, has started a multilingual item search service in Rakuten Ichiba, the biggest Japanese online shopping mall. Rakuten Ichiba top page[J] / Rakuten Ichiba top page[E] The sales of Rakuten’s E-Commerce division for the year ’07 was 75.5 billion yen( about 800 million US dollars). Rakuten launched E-Commerce service… Continue reading Japanese No.1 E-Commerce site “Rakuten” started multilingual item search

Q&A: What is the Japanese equivalent of [Western web service]?

Here is a list of where Japanese users usually go on the web when they want to connect with their friends, buy something or get information. I feature “made-in-Japan” sites and software only (well, almost), knowing that i.e. Google, Amazon and Firefox are highly popular in this country as well. Some of these Japanese sites… Continue reading Q&A: What is the Japanese equivalent of [Western web service]?