{"id":17266,"date":"2012-04-14T16:22:34","date_gmt":"2012-04-14T07:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/?p=17266"},"modified":"2012-04-14T16:22:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-14T07:22:34","slug":"jeff-bezos-amazon-japan-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/jeff-bezos-amazon-japan-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos Wants Amazon Japan&#8217;s Sales To Grow 30%, Bring Kindle Over This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/25\/amazon-japan-graduates\/amazon-japan\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14457\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14457\" title=\"amazon japan\" src=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/amazon-japan.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"169\" height=\"61\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThere can be no doubt that with a US$15 billion market cap, 75 million user accounts in Japan alone, and over 10,000 employees worldwide, the 800-pound gorilla in Japan&#8217;s e-commerce sector is <a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/tag\/rakuten\">Rakuten<\/a>.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/tag\/amazon-japan\/\">Amazon Japan<\/a> however, launched as early as 2000 (3 years later than Rakuten) continues to be a formidable opponent for the country&#8217;s homegrown B2B2C platform. (On <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rakuten.co.jp\/\">Rakuten&#8217;s market place<\/a>, almost all sales go through one of the 38,000 merchants, not through Rakuten itself.)<br \/>\nIn a recent interview with business daily The Nikkei, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos laid out his plans regarding the Japanese market.<br \/>\nHere are the key points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bezos says he wants sales in Japan to grow at least 30% per year going forward. (see below)<\/li>\n<li>The plan going forward is to boost the number of items in the fashion and food categories on the site in particular.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/03\/amazon-japan-starts-the-same-day-delivery-service\/\">Same-day delivery<\/a> is a key selling point for Amazon Japan. The company wants to add distribution centers in the Western part of the country to its nine existing facilities.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/04\/amazon-cloud-makes-landing-on-tokyo-japan\/\">Amazon&#8217;s cloud services<\/a> are doing very well in Japan, according to Bezos. He says his company will add data centers to meet the increasing demand in the country.<\/li>\n<li>Bezos also said that an announcement regarding the Kindle, recently rumored to <a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/11\/report-amazon-kindle-japan\/\">hit Japan in April<\/a>, will be coming &#8220;later this year&#8221;. He said his company is planning to launch a service that will make it possible for users to consume content on smartphones and the Kindle &#8220;seamlessly&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Nikkei estimates that Amazon&#8217;s Japanese subsidiary generates sales worth 500 billion yen (US$6.1 billion) in Japan. (Note: Amazon&#8217;s global revenue reached US$48 billion in 2011).<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s my short case study comparing Amazon Japan with Rakuten from 2009 <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2009\/07\/05\/japans-rakuten-can-the-biggest-e-commerce-site-you-never-heard-of-become-a-threat-for-amazon-globally-2\/\">on TechCrunch<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There can be no doubt that with a US$15 billion market cap, 75 million user accounts in Japan alone, and over 10,000 employees worldwide, the 800-pound gorilla in Japan&#8217;s e-commerce sector is Rakuten. Amazon Japan however, launched as early as 2000 (3 years later than Rakuten) continues to be a formidable opponent for the country&#8217;s&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/jeff-bezos-amazon-japan-interview\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jeff Bezos Wants Amazon Japan&#8217;s Sales To Grow 30%, Bring Kindle Over This Year<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,24],"tags":[198,1007,1834,1977,3047],"class_list":["post-17266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-news","tag-amazon-japan","tag-e-commerce","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-kindle","tag-rakuten","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}