By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Amazon Japan is set to expand its business: the company started offering software (for download) today, anything from games, to anti-virus programs to office applications. The selection (or prices) aren’t terribly exciting, but this is actually a quite big move for the site. Amazon Japan...
Amazon Japan has released a native Android app today. It allows users to search for all 20 million items listed on Amazon Japan and directly make a purchase, too. The app also features a barcode function, Amazon’s 1-click ordering system, and Amazon Prime support. The Amazon Japan Android app...
Big news from Amazon regarding the Japanese market today. The company announced it has started offering its cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services to local customers via data centers located in Japan (near Tokyo). The new facility is Amazon’s fifth data center and the second in Asia...
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...
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