By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Three top e-commerce entrepreneurs from Japan: 1) Hiroshi Mikitani from Rakuten (). $10 billion market cap. 2) Minoru Tanaka from Kakaku.com () $1.5 billion market cap. 3) Teruhide Sato from Netprice (;) $70 million market cap. Note: Mikitani and Sato started their e-commerce platforms by...
Here is the link to a column I wrote on the race between Amazon Japan and Rakuten for the journal for the American Chamber Of Commerce in Japan. Excerpt: The Japanese economy is mired in deflation, the population is shrinking rapidly, and retail sales are projected to fall by 1 percent annually in...
Rakuten has announced the acquisition of Buy.com today. The expansion to the USA can now begin: When I covered Rakuten back in July last year, I called it “the biggest e-commerce site you never heard of”. And in fact, the eponymous Japanese company behind the B2B2C market place (which is currently...
Shake-up in Asia’s e-commerce world today: Yahoo Japan and China’s Taobao, have inked deal under which both services will link their shopping sites, allowing Chinese users to shop on Yahoo Japan and Japanese users to do the same on Taobao: Yahoo Japan (Japan’s biggest website) and...
Amazon Japan seems to be in deep trouble with tax authorities in this country: Bad news for Amazon over the weekend. The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau slapped Amazon’s affiliated unit “Amazon.com International Sales” with a $119 million tax bill. Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday...
What is Rakuten and how does this company do against Amazon Japan? These are the two main questions I answer in this primer: The term “e-commerce” still lacks a universally valid definition, but even if you just bundle B2B and B2C transactions under it, it’s a multi-trillion dollar business...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry