Tagrakuten

The saga between Rakuten and major Japanese TV broadcaster TBS has finally come to an end. After years of battling out in court (and on the Tokyo Stock Exchange), TBS has bought back Rakuten’s entire 19.94% stake yesterday. The purchase ended a capital partnership, which began back in 2005...

Rakuten president Hiroshi Mikitani said in an interview he gave to The Nikkei that his company will enter a handful of countries in Europe plus Brazil and India this year. According to Mikitani, further acquisitions in those markets are possible, too. These countries would follow Japan, China...

Rakuten has posted a press release in English about “Edy Autocharge”, a new feature that was added to the company’s Edy app on Android (“Edy” is a prepaid e-money service, more info here). With the new feature, a Rakuten user’s balance is checked every hour and once it falls beneath a...

The smartphone revolution Japan is seeing can’t be ignored by Rakuten, the country’s biggest online mall. After having released a special shopping app for the iPhone in February, Rakuten just released a counterpart for Android. Rakuten says there are two things especially worth...

Indonesian tech blog DailySocial just reported that Rakuten Belanja, Rakuten‘s online mall in Indonesia is now live (as a beta version). Rakuten Belanja is a joint venture with PT Global Mediacom Tbk, the biggest media company in Indonesia. The partnership was announced in December 2010. My...

It seems Rakuten‘s drive towards internationalization is continuing. CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said in an interview with Japanese newspaper Mainichi that: he wants to see Rakuten grow its international business ten-fold in 15 years Rakuten will open their online mall Rakuten Ichiba in four...