Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Rakuten Symphoy is the  enabler of radio access network innovation and can without problems compete with the incumbent vendors’ traditional, integrated systems when it comes to meeting operators’ immediate needs.  

Cabify launches logistics brand

14th October 2022

Cabify, the international multi-mobility platform, has opened a new chapter in its diversification of mobility solutions, this time aimed at the storage and transfer of goods, with the launch of the new Cabify Logistics brand in Spain and Latin America. With this new line of business, the company seeks to continue to grow and consolidate its position as an ally of mobility in cities, offering a safe, efficient, and sustainable quality service, taking advantage of the potential of technology.

The company aims to close the year growing five times more than last year in this new line of business. To this end, Cabify expects to invest $20m in Cabify Logistics. The main focus of Cabify Logistics will continue to be the urban last-mile logistic service in Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Chile for companies in sectors such as e-commerce, retail or pharma.

Specifically, in the Latin American market, the strategy will focus on offering immediate deliveries to supermarkets and retailers. Also, in this region, the company has started offering last-mile logistics services for restaurants that already have their own delivery order channel or use online ordering systems such as Chile’s Mercat. Chains such as Wendy’s and KFC in Argentina already use Cabify Logistics as a logistics provider. In the case of Chile, Mercat’s partner restaurants can find Cabify as a delivery option directly from the marketplace platform.

In the coming months, Cabify Logistics will continue to work on strengthening the technology that supports the operation to remain a leader in routing, real-time tracking, and warehouse management. The customisation of Cabify Logistics’ service is based on the constant development and adaptation of its technology according to the needs of its customers and on offering a user-friendly experience. In that sense, the company is looking to add new integrations with e-commerce and logistics platforms to offer a more agile way to customers who wish to start using the service.

“We are betting heavily on Cabify Logistics and will invest in strengthening our technology and team. This line of business started with five people, and to date, there are already more than 50 of us, in addition to Cabify’s central resources. We are reinforcing the team in the countries where we operate to scale the service we provide to our customers, and we will invest in strengthening our customer service centre and its technology to accelerate our 24/7 multichannel service,” Pascual said.

In terms of fleet, the company will continue to offer motorbike and car services in Latin America, where it is already the leader. As a novelty, it plans to introduce one tonne or more cargo vehicles soon and to continue increasing the electric and zero-emission fleet by including bicycles and electric scooters. In the case of Spain, 100% of Cabify Logistics’ own fleet are electric vans dedicated exclusively to the parcel service.

https://www.logisticsbusiness.com/uncategorised/...s-logistics-brand/  

But Rakuten has hedged the ownership in Lyft to a higher share-price

Rakuten Updates Holdings in LYFT (LYFT)

February 06, 2023 — 04:03 pm EST

Fintel reports that Rakuten has filed a 13G/A form with the SEC disclosing ownership of 31.40MM shares of LYFT. This represents 8.91% of the company.

In the last filing dated February 10, 2022 they reported owning 9.45% of the company, indicating no change in their holdings.

Analyst Price Forecast Suggests 33.63% Upside

As of February 6, 2023, the average one-year price target for LYFT is $23.22. The forecasts range from a low of $11.11 to a high of $69.43. The average price target represents an increase of 33.63% from its latest reported closing price of $17.38.

The projected annual revenue for LYFT is $4,935MM, an increase of 26.86%. The projected annual EPS is $0.90.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/rakuten-updates-holdings-in-lyft-lyft  

Move to cloud-native 5G helps Dish break grip of telco hardware mafia

By Dan Jones Feb 6, 2023

One side effect of the move to cloud-native 5G for Dish is that it is helping the greenfield operator break the grip of the Scandinavian telco hardware mafia on 5G base station manufacturing.

The operator is building its own cloud-native open radio access network (O-RAN)-compliant base stations.

Silverlinings already reported about Dish hosting its 5G standalone (SA) core on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud and how that drastically improved the service provider’s 5G time-to-market. We thought we'd follow up once more with Dave Mayo, executive vice president of network development at Dish, about how building its own base stations is reducing the operator’s reliance on traditional telecom hardware vendors.

“Nobody else in the U.S. is actually doing that,” he said.”If I think back to my past life, when I was buying a base station, it would come in a nice tidy little crate that got shipped from Helsinki or Stockholm.”

Rakuten Mobile, however, is moving in the same direction in Japan. The operator bought startup Altiostar in the summer of 2021 to help grow its own virtualized Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP). In fact, Dish will use Rakuten Symphony’s observability framework (OBF) to enable the use of AI as part of the Dish 5G network.

Mayo added that Dish's use of an O-RAN infrastructure “is going to give us a much greater opportunity to control our spectrum.”

https://www.silverliningsinfo.com/apps-services/...lco-hardware-mafia  

https://k-tai.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/review/1474731.html  

Rakuten Card's Special "Takeru" Design Card Announced!

February 08, 2023

Rakuten Card released a new card design featuring famous Japanese martial artist Takeru. Applications are accepted beginning February 8, 2023. Check out the video for highlights from the press launch featuring Takeru and model Yuuchami. You can apply for the new card here! (In Japanese only) https://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/card/t...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGWtXrs5hG0  

https://www.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/2301/29/news041.html  

Rakuten Symphony Looks to Command 5G RAN Planning with Symworld RAN Commander Unveiling

Analyst Take: Rakuten Symphony Symworld RAN Commander is developed as a one-stop solution for all aspects of network planning and optimization, consolidating legacy PC-based tools, licenses, and data into one managed cloud native platform operation. The solution can ease issues with license management, single user tool installation, and scattered confidential data. All calculations and simulations are performed in the cloud, minimizing local processing delays, while offering a customizable approach to network expansion, 5G monetization, and improved business outcomes.

The Rakuten Symphony Intelligent Operations Business Division developed the new solution consisting of the RAN Designer, which provides planning for a large-scale greenfield network or the optimized expansion and configuration of existing networks, as well as RAN Optimizer for network configuration and optimization through a geospatial interface that supports streamlined visualization of network health, fault, configuration, and performance.

I see the new Symworld RAN Commander solution as meeting the distinct demands of 5G network planning in key areas such as easing 5G new radio (NR) implementation, scaling massive MIMO builds, providing flexible numerology, and supporting new sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands. CSPs are prioritizing RAN optimization to support 5G applications such as fixed wireless access (FWA), enhanced mobile broadband (EMB), and massive IoT services. As such, 3D planning is key to making the best design and optimization selections, especially toward streamlining the design of intricate 4G/5G networks.

I believe the Rakuten Symphony Symworld RAN Commander is solidly positioned to fulfill CSP radio planning requirements to optimize their 5G network design and expansion by delivering key capabilities such as crowdsourced data, ML, and automation that can efficiently scale planning processes, predict subscriber experiences, and control costs. This includes providing the 5G NR modeling key to accelerating CSP advanced propagation models, intricate antenna arrays, and complete multi-technology 3D coverage and capacity simulations priorities.

https://futurumresearch.com/research-notes/...an-commander-unveiling/  

DOD and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Launch 2023 5G Challenge for Open RAN with an Eye Toward Future Base Modernization
Feb. 2, 2023

The FutureG & 5G Office in the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) is launching the 2023 5G Challenge. Sponsored by the FutureG & 5G Office and led by the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences division of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) from the Department of Commerce, the 5G Challenge will accelerate the adoption of open interfaces, interoperable components, and multi-vendor solutions toward the development of an open 5G ecosystem.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/...nistration-launch-2/  

Rakuten targets big edge deployments with Symworld Cloud

Japanese giant Rakuten bought Kubernetes management platform Robin.io and put it in 50,000-plus telco antennas. Now it aims Symworld Cloud at enterprise edge deployments

Published: 08 Feb 2023 10:00

“The VMware of edge servers.” That was the plan for Robin.io.

Since being bought by Japanese giant the Rakuten Group, Robin.io has become Symworld Cloud, and seen its Kubernetes management and storage system deployed to more than 50,000 servers by the company’s telco arm, Rakuten Symphony, in OpenRAN equipment in 5G towers.

“Our strength in relation to the big Kubernetes players – Red Hat OpenShift and VMware Tanzu – is that our system was conceived of early on for very large deployments,” said Partha Seetala, president of Rakuten Symphony, to Computer Weekly’s French sister publication, LeMagIT, during a recent IT Press Tour event.

“Our competitor’s approach is to manage application instances in a uniform hardware cluster with one type of CPU, GPU, storage and network card,” said Seetala. “Ours is exposed in the same way from different hardware so that applications get the maximum performance as if written expressly for them.

“Take for example these case in telecoms, when an OpenRAN deployment wants to validate a communication in less than 40μs. It is simply impossible to do if your software code doesn’t take into account the type of network or FPGA accelerator in your equipment. But you have 800 hardware variants in your antenna park. What do you do? Write and deploy 800 versions of your code? That’s what you have to do with our competitors. We, however, expose our underlying hardware in a universal manner.”

Rakuten Symphony’s software offer currently comes in three products. Symworld CNP (Cloud Native Platform) is the Kubernetes system bought from Robin.io. Symworld Orchestrator is the console for remote admin of edge servers, something like VMware vCenter but capable of managing 100,000 physical machines and more than 10,000 Kubernetes clusters.

Finally, Symworld CNS (Cloud Native Storage) corresponds to the storage layer in Robin.io CNP, which can be installed on top of any other Kubernetes system, with OpenShift particularly in mind. According to the company, Ceph storage, which Red Hat supplies for use with Kubernetes, is not completely suited to edge deployments.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365530107/...-with-Symworld-Cloud  

Rakuten Symphony said that Symworld RAN Commander is a one-stop solution for all aspects of network planning and optimization

By Juan Pedro Tomás

February 7, 2023

The company said that Symworld RAN Commander consolidates legacy PC-based tools, licenses and data into one managed, cloud-native platform operation. “This eliminates all problems with license management, single user tool installation and scattered confidential data,” the company said, adding that all calculations and simulations are performed in the cloud.

The Japanese company also said that Symworld RAN Commander provides “complete visibility and awareness of the live network, subscriber intelligence and traffic distribution” so that operators can target their investments and management to maximize returns during the network roll-out process.

The Symworld RAN Commander suite is comprised of tools for large-scale greenfield network design or optimization of the expansion and configuration of existing networks; and network monitoring and optimization via a geospatial interface that aggregates data “from highest to lowest granularity of geography and node.”

https://www.rcrwireless.co  

Rakuten Viber unlocks AI capabilities with its new chatbot

Viber’s AI Chat and Create chatbot allows users to ask questions and design images directly through the app

February 8, 2023 12:36 PM

Rakuten Viber, the global leader in private and secure messaging and voice-based communication, has launched a new chatbot, AI Chat and Create, providing users easy access to AI text and image generators.

By integrating advanced models of generative AI, such as DALL-E and Davinci, the Viber app now allows users to ask the chatbot any question or test the chatbot's creativity by designing unique images, reads a press release.

Viber acts as the interface between the complex technology and the user, allowing everyone to take part in the fun without having to provide access to their email or create a separate account for each service.

With just a few taps, users can transition between chatting with friends to using the bot, sharing their art, or answer a question effortlessly.

Due to organic growth, the chatbot already has over 70,000 subscribers and over 250,000 viewers and is constantly growing.

https://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2022/11/22/...with-new-features  

Collaboration Between Rakuten and National Brands Accelerates Mutual Growth

FEBRUARY 8, 2023 by RNN

More and more national brands are utilizing Rakuten Ichiba. The Account Innovation Office (AIO) aims to empower these larger brands by acting as a liaison between them and the wider Rakuten Ecosystem, producing many different collaborations.

https://global.rakuten.com/corp/innovation/rnn/2022/2211_010/  

by Shawn Johnson February 8, 2023 in Innovation

Future of Open RAN

The adoption of Open RAN in the telecommunications industry will be exciting, as it offers many benefits for network operators and vendors alike.

As the industry continues to evolve, Open RAN has the potential to play a significant role in shaping the future of telecommunications, fostering a more open and inclusive industry by giving operators more choice and flexibility in building and maintaining their networks. Giving as well as fosters innovation and competition. Widespread adoption of Open RAN could increase access to lower cost, better network performance and higher quality telecommunications services for people around the world.

https://biz.crast.net/benefits-of-open-ran/  

Anzahl der Unique User IDs bei Viber bis September 2022

Diese Statistik zeigt die Anzahl Unique IDs bei Viber in ausgewählten Monaten zwischen März 2015 und September 2022. Im September 2022 lag die Anzahl der Unique IDs des Chat-Dienstes für Smartphones und Desktop-PCs, mit dem auch telefoniert werden kann, bei rund 1,4 Milliarden.

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/...tzer-ids-bei-viber/  

Rakuten Viber brandishes 106% growth in Phl, thanks Filipino enterprises’ trust

By THEPHILBIZNEWS January 29, 2023

There’s no stopping Rakuten Viber as it recently announced two major launches worldwide as a new stage in the evolution of brand-user interaction on the app. The new offerings include a Business Inbox and a searchable Commercial Account, which will become the next step in Viber’s long-term superapp strategy.

According to research reports, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 82% of organizations plan to implement a strategy to deliver a better customer value through services. With both users and businesses in mind, Viber’s updates are a step toward providing a better customer experience and brand engagement and truly makes them deserve to be the global leader in private and secure messaging and voice-based communication.

“The recent updates to Viber provide a strong foundation for the introduction of additional features as part of the company’s superapp strategy,” says Cristina Constandache, Chief Revenue Officer at Rakuten Viber, who joins the media roundtable with the Philippine press launching the new features through a video call. “This strategy aims to improve the utility of the app for users and expand the ways in which brands can connect with their audience in a natural way, resulting in increased value for both parties. By adding more features, services, and communication channels, Viber is able to offer more value to both users and brands in a streamlined manner.”

https://thephilbiznews.com/2023/01/29/...-filipino-enterprises-trust/  

February 8, 2023

THEMA, a Canal+ Group company, has expanded its distribution activity in Japan with the launch of Vivaldi FAST TV-channel via R Channel, a linear streaming service operated by Rakuten Group The classical music channel is now available to users across the R Channel platform.

After several recent new APAC deals by THEMA in Thailand, India, Hong Kong and South Korea, the company’s expansion into the Asian market marks its first deal in Japan.

“We could see big potential in Japan, being one the largest hubs for classical music. Rakuten is the ideal platform to make Vivaldi available to a new audience and allow the greatest symphonies within everyone’s reach,” said Alexandre Bac, Managing Director APAC at THEMA.

https://advanced-television.com/2023/02/08/...-in-japan-with-rakuten/  

Rakuten is an important client and an important owner of AST

AST SpaceMobile Announces Collaboration with Zain KSA

Memorandum of Understanding Would Explore Opportunities for New Telecommunications and Digital Solutions in Saudi Arabia

MIDLAND, Texas, February 09, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTS), the company building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network designed to be accessible directly by standard mobile phones, today announced a non-binding memorandum of understanding ("MoU") with Zain KSA ("Zain"), a leading telecommunications ("telecom") operator and a digital service provider in Saudi Arabia. The signing took place at the international LEAP 2023 Tech Conference in Riyadh.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/...s-collaboration-zain-120100448.html  

https://global.fr.shopping.rakuten.com/actualites/...ique-e-commerce/  

https://www.hikkoshi-line.com/smartphone/rakutenmobile-campaign/  

Rakuten Viber Adds Storage-Saving Feature Into the Chat App

New settings allow for deleting photos and videos you no longer need, while preserving your chat history.

Mike Sorrentino Feb. 9, 2023 5:00 a.m. PT

The Rakuten Viber chat app is adding a new feature to help downsize the app's size, especially for people that use the app on phone's with limited storage space. The app is providing faster access to deleting photos, videos and other media from conversations while preserving the chat history.

The new storage management features, announced Thursday, allows for wiping out media from the entire Viber cache or from specific conversations.

The storage management menus will also display how much space each of your chats currently take up, alongside the amount of space that's available on your phone.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/...saving-feature-into-the-chat-app/  

By Rakuten Advertising January 6, 2023

https://blog.rakutenadvertising.com/news/...vertising-2022-award-wins  

Rakuten Advertising install the position of commercial director for China.

Singapore – Performance advertising company Rakuten Advertising has announced the appointment of Neil Cao to the position of commercial director for China. His new role is part of the international leadership team and will support the growth of an incredibly dynamic and innovative region for affiliate marketing.

Based in Shanghai, Cao will be responsible for leading the Rakuten Advertising business across China by developing and implementing performance marketing strategies for clients and accelerating growth in the country.

His background spans over a decade of experience in the digital ecosystem, ranging from e-commerce, to consumer electronics, to app and gaming. As an advocate for full-funnel performance strategies, he has leveraged various media channels including search, display and programmatic to help clients drive engagement, sales, loyalty and beyond.

Cao has a proven track record in digital advertising and business development, including successfully selling programmatic advertising to new-to-DSP Chinese merchants and hitting the one million-dollar milestone with MiQ. He has also managed the monetisation of mobile apps, leading to a successful NYSE listing with Cheeta Mobile.

https://marketech-apac.com/...ector-for-china-at-rakuten-advertising/  

Brands like Rakuten, Squarespace, Best Buy turn to in-house teams to create flexible, quick Super Bowl campaigns

February 10, 2023 3 min read By Kristina Monllos

As marketers continue to build out in-house agencies — creative, media or otherwise — offering the talent that joins said agencies the ability to crack major campaign moments like the Super Bowl is necessary, according to in-house agency execs.

Cash-back platform Rakuten will run its second Super Bowl spot by its 45-person in-house team this year. The platform has in-house brand strategists, creative strategists, art directors and designers as well as a production staff. The team crafted a 30-second ad that will run during the game featuring stars of Clueless reviving their roles in the film to tout the fashion offerings of Rakuten.

“We knew we needed a creative team who could do it all,” said Vicki McRae, svp of brand, creative and communications at Rakuten, adding that when she joined the platform three years ago the plan was to grow an in-house team to not only figure out the tone of voice, look and feel of the brand but make sure it was a team with “big ambitions.”

McRae added: “We needed people who had a vision to set foundational elements who could deliver things like the Super Bowl. With that in mind, to get the top talent you need to bring in-house to do all those things, you have to make sure they are [given the opportunity] to touch all those things.”

https://digiday.com/marketing/...flexible-quick-super-bowl-campaigns/  

Shortquezze will happen next Wednesday - after Rakuten reporting about Q4

Rakuten Mobile will report about lower losses in Q4/2022 and when Rakuten will report about the break-even of Rakuten Mobile, the net-income of Rakuten will increase to $ 2 billion in 2024.