Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Even before the virus became prevalent, most retailers were experiencing a behavioral change. Digital shopping had disrupted the growth of many product categories- entertainment, books, and electronics. Others were in the initial stages of their transition to virtual shopping.

The Coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the shift to digital retailing. As consumers continue to practice shelter-in-place orders, eCommerce orders for home essentials have become a means to an end for most Americans. Based on figures from Apptopia, the number of daily downloads for renowned grocery apps Shipt, Walmart, and Instacart has skyrocketed since February. Many Americans are trying out online digital shopping service for the FIRST time, too.

This trend has a significant impact on retail brands. As a result of order surges and delivery costs, digital shopping orders are less rewarding compared to typical in-house purchases. Retailers will need to come up with ways to boost the online unit economics of fast-moving products (for instance, groceries). Furthermore, the online experience doesn't naturally allow for new product trials, impulse purchases, or immediate consumption buys. Retailers all over the country will need to innovate digital means to rejuvenate these habitual behaviors.

https://www.rakutensl.com/post/...-can-learn-from-the-covid-19-crisis
 

https://www.mmh.com/article/..._and_robots_at_rakuten_super_logistics  

https://blog.rakutenadvertising.com/insights/...-commission-growth-2/  

How Rakuten Mobile Overcame First-of-its-Kind Network Challenges

Matt Kapko | EditorMay 1, 2020 4:37 PM

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/...twork-challenges/2020/05/
 

"Other investments, such as one Rakuten made in open RAN software vendor Altiostar last year that gave it majority ownership in the company, were driven by a desire to maintain Altiostar’s independence, he said. “We wanted to completely protect the entity, protect it from losing its dream and objective to bring an alternative to radio access.”

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/...twork-challenges/2020/05/
 

Hier liegen gigantische Chancen für Rakuten – wenn ich mir auch wünschen würde, dass Rakuten in Südostasien sich noch mehr engagiert.

https://www.ppro.com/blog/decoding-asia-pacifics-e-commerce-landscape/

Okay – man ist ein wichtiger Eigner bei Carousell, neuerdings auch bei Shopback und hält eine kleine Beteiligung bei Gojek, Viber ist in machen Staaten stark vertreten und man könnte auch noch die Beteiligung am Zahlungsverkehrdienstanbieter Codapay anführen. Im Fintechbereich ist außerdem Rakuten Securities in Hongkong, Malaysia und Australien vertreten und hinzu kommt auch noch Rakuten Viki. Das war es dann auch schon ziemlich, von einigen weiteren Beteiligungen von Rakuten Capital abgesehen.

Insgesamt ist mir das eigentlich etwas zu wenig.
 

Meanwhile the Prime Minister also announced on social media the launch of an official community on the popular Viber messaging network that will provide information on all the developments regarding COVID-19 in the country.

We stay home, we stay informed,” wrote Mitsotakis, and provided the link for potential members, which you can find here.

The new community is now available to all users of the Viber platform in Greece and will provide updated information on coronavirus developments, the measures the government has taken and the ways of restricting the virus’ spread, government sources said. They added the community will collect all official notices in one place in the social media world and make them readily available to the public.
The project, it said, is part of the Digital Ministry’s ‘Digital Solidarity’ initiative and part of the government’s greater efforts to digitisation.

https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/04/17/...-virtual-community-in-viber/
 

State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak today launched live corona risk assessment test system for citizens’ on Viber bot.

Viber is a cross-platform voice over IP and instant messaging software application, while bot is a software application that runs automated tasks over the internet.

Palak inaugurated the https://vb.me/ict_bot_bangladesh2020_pr titled bot through virtual press conference.

Anyone, with Viber account, can assess the level of risk of coronavirus to him and find out the things to do by using the application launched on trial basis, with the help of Directorate General of Health Services and MCC, an official release said.

https://en.somoynews.tv/7642/news/...na-risk-test-system-on-Viber-bot

 

Tired of getting fake news? Then we encourage everyone to join the official Department of Health Philippines Group on Viber.

Unlike other groups, the best part about this one is that only OFFICIAL admins and DOH Officials tasked to spread awareness about the Corona Virus can post. The group now has over 100k members and is growing really fast.

Share this link to everyone you know. There’s nothing more important that getting the right information from proper sources in a lockdown (community quarantine).

This is the invite message that gets passed on Viber. Try clicking it to see it it will work. If not, we suggest opening this post in your phone and try clicking the link from there.

I’d like to encourage everyone in this chat group to join the DOH viber group to get covid 19 updates STRAIGHT from DOH. The message below is from Doc Bev Ho of DOH.

https://www.swimbikerun.ph/2020/03/...viber-group-to-avoid-fake-news/
 

tracking cookies

Rakuten and SG-based SQREEM launch new AI marketing joint venture
GRACE ONG
05 FEBRUARY 2020

Japanese internet service provider Rakuten has partnered with Singapore-based AI company SQREEM Technologies to launch its jointly established company Rakuten SQREEM. The new company will provide AI-based marketing solutions to companies and advertisers in Japan.

The new company will marry Rakuten's data with SQREEM's AI behavioural pattern analysis data to come up with marketing solutions and enable media buying for Internet advertising through partners. It will also provide advertisers with a real-time picture of increasingly complex consumer behaviour, hoping to improve advertisers' ad performance and cost efficiencies. SQREEM is a Singapore-based AI company founded in 2006. It provides a marketing solution not dependent on individual identifiable data but by utilising an AI-automated behavioural pattern analysis platform that analyses consumer behaviour data.

an Chapman-Banks, CEO of SQREEM Technologies said with Google announcing the removal of third-party tracking cookies, advertisers and agencies are searching for alternative solutions to understand and reach consumers while allowing them to retain their privacy.

"With SQREEM’s cookieless AI tech stack, we are able to automate and achieve precise digital media buying. This enables us to serve both brands and agencies in GDPR compliant ways that can withstand privacy scrutiny in even the strictest markets," he added.

https://www.marketing-interactive.com/...w-ai-marketing-joint-venture

 

Rakuten Launches Rakuten Travel Xchange

New single source platform simplifies global hotel inventory management for travel retailers.

Singapore, May 1, 2020 - Rakuten, Inc. today announced the launch of Rakuten Travel Xchange, a hotel distribution service providing travel retailers around the world with easy access to hotel rates and inventories through a single source. Travel businesses will be able to manage their entire hotel inventory needs from a single API connection, via a tailored web portal or template solutions, or its Travel Agent Portal, without spending valuable resources on integrating multiple supply partners.
Rakuten Travel Xchange combines its vast network of partnerships with hotel chains, wholesalers, channel managers and other large Online Travel Agents (OTAs) around the world with long-standing contracts from Rakuten Group company brands Rakuten Travel and Rakuten LIFULL STAY, each among the largest online travel agencies in the Japanese hotel and vacation rental industries.

Against the backdrop of a global shut-down in the travel industry, Rakuten aims to leverage its global footprint, its deep roots in Asia and its leadership position in the Japan travel market to help travel retailers around the world to simplify global travel inventory management.

https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/update/2020/...5&category=ec
 

https://exbulletin.com/entertainment/43320?business-services  

Altiostar is Founding Member of Open RAN Policy Coalition
TEWKSBURY, Mass., May 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Altiostar today announced it is one of the founding members of the new Open RAN Policy Coalition, which launched today.

Altiostar as a leader in open virtualized RAN solutions, is one of 31 industry leaders that are part of the coalition which was created to advance the adoption of open and interoperable solutions in the Radio Access Network (RAN) as a means to create innovation, spur competition and expand the supply chain for advanced wireless technologies including 5G.

Altiostar intends to contribute its learnings and significant experience with deploying the first commercial large scale cloud-based open RAN network with Rakuten in Japan. This network which went live with more than 14,000 radios in April, was built with a wide variety of ecosystem vendors that was built on open RAN principles.

In a press release issued today, the coalition said it believes that governments have an important role to play in facilitating and fostering an open, diverse and secure supply chain for advanced wireless technologies, including 5G, such as by funding research and development, accelerating deployment of open and interoperable networks and solutions, and incentivizing supply chain diversity.

Other founding members of the Open RAN Policy Coalition include Airspan, AWS, AT&T, Cisco, CommScope, Dell, DISH Network, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Mavenir, Microsoft, NEC Corporation, NewEdge Signal Solutions, NTT, Oracle, Parallel Wireless, Qualcomm, Rakuten, Samsung Electronics America, Telefonica, US Ignite, Verizon, VMWare, Vodafone, World Wide Technology, and XCOM-Labs.

https://www.finanzen.net/nachricht/aktien/...policy-coalition-8829103
 

Matt Kapko | EditorMay 1, 2020 4:37 PM

With much of the foundation now set for Rakuten Mobile’s aspiration to become a fourth nationwide mobile operator in Japan, the company has its sights set on expansion outside of Japan. It hired Azita Arvani to be GM of Rakuten Mobile in the Americas, and has assembled a platform to sell packaged and customizable services to meet the needs of other operators.

“The dream that we have is to tell many of the existing telecom operators, ‘look, take two years of the journey that we had, it was not simple, it was not easy to build our organization, it was not easy to build the right skill sets. Maybe you should not repeat the same mistakes,’” Amin said.

Rakuten Cloud Platform is like an app store for telecommunications network infrastructure that enables operators to click, purchase, and deploy services in a matter of weeks. “We’re very interested to find the right partners and the right opportunity to take the Rakuten Cloud Platform and ship it as an entire telco pod that has the entire technology, including by the way new technology stacks that we have built and will be building for both OSS and BSS,” he said.

“We think it’s a compelling proposition, to take all these lessons learned in Tokyo, package it, and have a technology stack that is completely open and allow others to help us make it credible and validate its use case outside of Japan,” Amin added.

Rakuten is also making investments to aid this effort, but it’s taking a relatively tempered approach. “We don’t need to spend billions of U.S. dollars acquiring you know, I call it maybe a traditional technology software stack. But we are looking and always looking opportunistically in the areas where I believe we could make the biggest impact,” he said.

Those areas, in order of biggest potential impact, include: OSS and BSS, orchestration, cloud infrastructure, and the entire containers layer. The company has entered into an agreement to acquire a company that specializes in OSS and BSS because, as Amin describes it, that is the “heart of transformation in any operator” and the “systems that exist today are in desperate need of transformation.” He declined to name the company, but said it will be publicly announced later this month.

As for the Rakuten Cloud Platform, Amin is confident that it will reach maturity in June “with key telco workloads that are 100% cloud native, completely orchestrated, are elastic, and have all the auto-healing functions enabled.”

Getting to this point hasn’t been easy, and Amin expected that going into the project, but “we have no option and no choice but to make this successful” and “we are really, really close,” he said.

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/...twork-challenges/2020/05/  

https://www.internetworld.de/e-commerce/amazon/...amazon-2520108.html  

Deeper Dive—Rakuten Viki built a huge streaming service on community, rewards
by Ben Munson |
Jan 24, 2020 9:54am

Rakuten Viki has grown into a massive streaming video service by using community building and a rewards system.

The service offers Asian dramas, comedies and other series, and draws on a community of users to help translate and subtitle the content. The name Viki is a play on words, a combination of video and wiki. It’s that community user management format that allows Rakuten Viki to translate its content into more than 200 languages.

Makoto Yasuda, chief operating officer at Rakuten Viki, said the service has 24 million registered members – the company doesn’t share subscriber totals – and is growing 40% year over year. Rakuten Viki is a hybrid ad-supported/subscription service. That means users can get free access to episodes with ads; the first two are free but then users have to wait for three weeks to get more episodes. However, if users want earlier access to episodes, they can become subscribers. Yasuda said this model has led to both subscriber and advertising revenue growing “significantly” on an annual basis.

Rakuten Viki recently rolled out new mobile app updates and a new homepage on the web “to cater to our passionate fans and community,” Yasuda said. The homepage includes rankings for the top contributors, most loved teams and scrolling updates about community members’ achievements. The service also recently added a watch history section that allows users to more easily access the previous 10 programs they watched. Yasuda said the updates have helped with subscriber growth, which is going up at a rate of 80% year over year. Rakuten Viki’s watch time is growing 65% annually as well.

Rakuten Viki’s biggest market is the U.S., which has recently seen several high-profile streaming service launches including Disney+ and Apple TV+. Yasuda said his company is focusing on super serving its biggest fans and continuing to innovate to make sure it stays relevant as more and more OTT platforms compete for consumers’ attention.

https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/...eaming-service-community-rewards  

Top 5 Chinese dramas that became popular overseas in 2019
By Wang Yiming

China has one of the biggest booming drama industries in the world. Dozens of new dramas are released every month, drawing in millions of viewers. In recent years, Chinese dramas have garnered more exposure and popularity globally. Many original series have been distributed overseas, bought and streamed on international video platforms like Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Rakuten Viki (the world's leading platform for Asian entertainment and culture) and MyDramaList (database and social community for Asian Dramas and Movies).

From high-quality historical costume series to romantic love comedies, C-dramas have taken Asia and even the world by storm. China.org.cn has rounded up 5 of the most acclaimed C-dramas in 2019 (in no particular order) that have also proved to be smash hits internationally.

http://www.china.org.cn/top10/2020-01/12/content_75600123.htm
 

"Falls bei anhaltendem „Hausarrest“ das Unterhaltungsmaterial für Kinder zu neige gehen sollte, lohnt womöglich eine Anmeldung bei Rakuten TV. Auch hier sind neben Dokus und Filmen für Erwachsende auch jede Menge Kindersendungen verfügbar – kostenlos für jeden, der sich ein Konto sichert."

https://www.techbook.de/pc-mac/software-pc-mac/...le-streaming-gratis
 

unter Corona:

https://www.fasttrack.co.uk/company_profile/azimo-2/  

http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/05/...ter-Results.html

Aber Corona ist in den USA eben weiter sehr heftig - und wie es weiter geht, ist kaum vorauszusagen. Aber Lyft hat die Kosten massiv reduziert und auch noch viel Cash.

Lyft ist daher m.E. nicht in seiner Existenz gefährdet.  

For instance, on Monday, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Youssef Squali repeated his Buy rating, but chopped his target for the stock price to $45, from $74. He slashed his earnings and revenue estimates for both this year and next.

Squali now expects 2020 revenue of $2.94 billion, with an adjusted Ebitda loss of $738 million. For 2021, he sees revenue of $4.04 billion, down from $5.83 billion, with an adjusted Ebitda loss of $456 million, far more than the $20 million loss he had expected.

“While we have very limited visibility into when and how demand ramps back up, we currently believe that this is largely a temporary drop in demand, with marginal demand destruction,” he wrote in a research note.

Likewise. Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju repeated his Outperform rating, while cutting his price target to $75, from $96.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/...2760?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo
 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/...vigate-survive-covid-021100559.html  

Rakuten Travel Xchange is the hotel wholesale and travel technology division within the Rakuten group. We distribute our global inventory and the directly negotiated rates of Rakuten Travel and Rakuten LIFULL STAY.

500,000 hotel properties

200,000 vacation rental properties

20,000 directly contracted properties

200 countries

Accommodation API
With almost 700,000 unique hotel and vacation rental properties, we have inventory in every corner of the globe.
We’ll personalize a portfolio of our best-selling properties to match your client demographics.

Travel Agent Portal
Access your entire supply via one screen, compare market rates, place reservations, and manage bookings for your customers via an easy to use interface that also highlights your earnings.

Custom Website
We have template solutions or we can build 100% custom solutions to increase your conversions and get you up and running quickly.
Your brand, your message, our inventory, that looks great on any device -- it doesn't get easier.

https://solutions.travel.rakuten.com/
 

Read the number: 126700 million = 126.7 billion in 2025

Global Virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) Market 2020 | Industry Size, Growth Opportunities, Competitive Analysis and Forecast to 2025
BY ANITA@ORBISRESEARCH.COM ON MAY 7, 2020

The global Virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) market size was 200 million US$ and it is expected to reach 126700 million US$ by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of 123.8% during 2018-2025.
This report studies the global Virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) market size, industry status and forecast, competition landscape and growth opportunity. This research report categorizes the global Virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) market by companies, region, type and end-use industry.
In the industry, Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia) profits most In 2017 and recent years, while NEC and Altiostar ranked 2 and 3.The market share of them is 26.09%, 15.61% and 11.83% in 2017.The gap of market share is keep on enlarged due to different strategy.

https://latestherald.com/2020/05/07/...analysis-and-forecast-to-2025/
 

Rakuten launches takeout services in the US and Japan to support local restaurants

3 hours ago

Restaurants have been hit particularly hard by the global pandemic. In the face of stay-at-home orders and social distancing, once-booming businesses are now struggling to survive. Amid these challenges, takeout has offered many business owners a chance to serve homebound customers safely and keep open their doors. Now, in an effort to support local eateries, Rakuten is applying its internet services expertise to roll out new digital takeout services on both sides of the Pacific.

To incentivize takeout orders, Rakuten.com is also offering its members 20% cash back on every order, for a limited time.

Mirroring its sister service in the U.S., Rakuten recently launched Rakuten Realtime Takeout in Japan. The service makes it possible for customers to pre-order and pay for products from restaurants, cafes and other eateries.

The service provides business owners with a simple solution for introducing takeout services at their establishment. In order to help local eateries get back on their feet, Rakuten is waiving initial fees and monthly usage fees for the platform through the end of October 2020.  In addition to lending dedicated smartphones for registering products and managing orders to interested restauranteurs, Rakuten will also send revenue earned via Rakuten Realtime Takeout to businesses as early as one week following transactions, based on each establishment’s financial circumstances.

https://rakuten.today/blog/...vices-supporting-local-restaurants.html