Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Rakuten Super Logistics Partners With Florida State Hispanic Chamber Of Commerce By Joining As New Board Trustee

May 4, 2021 Updated 2 hrs ago

WELLINGTON, Fla., May 4, 2021 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- Today the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (FSHCC) announced the recent appointment of Rakuten Super Logistics (RSL) to the chamber's esteemed board of trustees. Chamber members can immediately begin leveling up their eCommerce order fulfillment and increasing their speed of deliveries, improve order accuracy, decrease their shipping costs, and increase their customer satisfaction.

"Rakuten Super Logistics has been helping businesses succeed for 20 years and now our chamber members will benefit from this new partnership. RSL is a leader in eCommerce order fulfillment with its cloud-based fulfillment platform exhibiting order management features including automatic order importing, speedy delivery and an impressive history of customer satisfaction," said Julio Fuentes, President and CEO, FSHCC. "Chamber partners such as RSL are important because they ensure our chamber continues the sustainable growth of Florida commerce, while advocating for pro-business public policy in Florida.  I encourage our chamber members to engage Rakuten Super Logistics to gain a cost effective, competitive advantage beginning on day one."

https://www.wfmz.com/news/pr_newswire/...-5b98-9455-331749ab907f.html
 

durch solch eine solche Tätigkeit.  

Retailer Rakuten Beats Japanese Lenders at Digital Bank Game

Taiga Uranaka 4/23/2021

(Bloomberg) -- Rakuten Group Inc. is emerging as the first real digital contender to Japan’s traditional lenders, using its Amazon.com like e-commerce dominance to steer users to its online bank.

New digital bank accounts at the internet conglomerate that’s better known for its online shopping services expanded by 20% last year and recently topped 10 million, the most among the country’s online lenders. Deposits grew by about 50% over the same period to more than 5 trillion yen ($46 billion), putting it on par with Japan’s mid-sized regional banks.

Rakuten allows its more than 100 million members to collect loyalty points by using a swath of services including its bank, which can then be spent like money through its array of businesses from its travel agency to its movie and TV show app.

“Many of our customers are users of other Rakuten services,” Kosuke Takeuchi, part of the strategic planning team at Rakuten Bank, said in a recent interview. Last year’s growth in new accounts has continued into this year, fueled by clients of Rakuten’s brokerage service, he added.

After a slow start, Japanese consumers are beginning to embrace online transactions that saw a surge in demand in many countries during the pandemic.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/...tal-banking-game/ar-BB1fX7RM  

The shift in third-party cookie-tracking limitations and emphasis on privacy producing big advantages for Rakuten Advertising

Rakuten Advertising Looks Past Apple Privacy Changes To Thriving Business
By Laurie Sullivan April 26, 2021

Will more advertising dollars be pushed into affiliate marketing as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and others put limitations on third-party cookie tracking?

Anthony Capano, managing director of Rakuten Advertising North America, thinks so. He runs the programmatic display, search, affiliate, businesses for the U.S, as well as media services.

Rakuten has more than 70 services and businesses worldwide, such as Rakuten Advertising, Rakuten Viki, Rakuten TV and Rakuten Viber, among others. Let’s not forget Rakuten Rewards.

The parent company, Rakuten Group, serves nearly 1.4 billion members, which makes the ecosystem of first-party data enormous.

“We take privacy very seriously,” he said. “We implemented our technology to make sure we’ve protected the brands we work with, along with our company, and consumers. The data is now the cleanest and most consented that we’ve had.”

The company may be best known in the U.S. for its affiliate marketing channel, but that’s about to change, as people become more familiar with the company.

Some might not know, for example, that Rakuten has a video-on-demand service, called Rakuten Viki, but it has a global audience of TV shows, movies and original content that is translated into more than 150 languages by a community of fans. It has 38 million registered users.

The shift in third-party cookie-tracking limitations and emphasis on privacy will change Rakuten Advertising’s strategy, but the company has been focused on these themes for some time based on its location.

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/...-privacy-chang.html  

https://www.forbusiness.viber.com/en  

Open and virtualized RANs are the future of mobile networks

by
Sanket S. Nesargi
Craig Wigginton
Naima Hoque Essing
Jeff Loucks
Kevin Westcott

The open RAN market is still in its early days. We estimate that there are currently 35 active open RAN deployments across the globe,1 many of which involve MNOs testing open RAN in greenfield, rural, and emerging markets. Although deployments are starting slowly, they could easily double in 2021. While it may take anywhere from three to five years for the technology to fully mature, open RAN adoption should accelerate rapidly thanks to the logic of its network design and its strategic alignment with carrier needs. Economic and competitive forces are also converging to drive the market forward. If this trend continues, the open RAN market has the potential to grow substantially, with some estimating double-digit growth rates2 that will push open RAN to approach 10% of the total RAN market by 20253 from less than 1% today.4 Moreover, if governments force MNOs to replace installed 5G RAN equipment from restricted vendors, the growth rate may be even higher.

https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/industry/...ss-networks.html  

IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation, Red Hat OpenShift and Altiostar software

Accelerating vRAN/5G deployments through automation

Telecom providers are evolving how traditional RANs are provisioned and managed towards open virtualized Radio Access Networks (vRANs) by taking advantage of cloud-native cost saving methodologies, low-code tooling, and commodity hardware. This session will unveil how automation and modeling can enable zero touch provisioning of vRANs to accelerate time to market of 4G and 5G services, using a combination of IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation, Red Hat OpenShift and Altiostar software.

Anil Bhandari, VP of Product Management, Altiostar will be joined by panelists from IBM and Red Hat for the webinar.

https://www.altiostar.com/4276-2/
 

SHOP EARN GET PAID

Up to 30% Cash Back at over 750+ stores

No points. No fees. No forms.

https://www.rakuten.ca/  

Verbilligen - fast an jedem Tag in kleinen Mengen, auch wenn das provisionstechnisch nicht ganz logisch ist.

Die letzten Kursrückgänge sind m.E. das Ergebnis der Furcht vor hohen Quartalsverlusten in Q1/2021, die selbstverständlich auch eintreten werden, wenn man für sieben Jahre vorgesehene Investitionen (selbst wenn die überwiegend nicht direkt Aufwand sind, sondern "nur" zu Abschreibungen führen) auf zwei Jahre komprimiert und sich die Erlöse wegen des Freijahrs beim Start und noch niedriger Userzahlen nicht adäquat mitentwickelt haben.  

https://www.shopstyle.com/trending  

gekommen ist, davon auch eine Variante in Europa zu etablieren, kann ich nicht nachvollziehen, denn sie würde m.E. exzellent ins Konzept passen.  

E-Commerce ist neben Fintech, Communication, Advertising und Mobile nur ein Teilbereich:

Global e-commerce jumps to $26.7 trillion, COVID-19 boosts online sales
03 May 2021

Table 2: Top B2C e-commerce companies by GMV, 2020
Rank by GMV Company HQ Industry GMV
($ billions) GMV change
(%)
      2020      2019                                    2018      2019      2020   2018-19   2019-20§
         1         1   Alibaba     ChinaE-commerce       866       954§   1,145 10.2 20.1
         2         2    Amazon       USAE-commerce       344       417       575      21.0      38.0§
         3         3    JD.com     ChinaE-commerce       253       302       379      19.1      25.4§
         4         4 Pinduoduo     ChinaE-commerce        71       146       242     104.4      65.9§
         5         9   Shopify    Canada§Internet Media & Services 41 61 120 48.7 95.6
         6         7      eBay       USAE-commerce        90        86       100      -4.8      17.0§
         7        10   Meituan     ChinaE-commerce        43        57        71      33.0      24.6§
         8        12   Walmart       USA§Consumer goods retail 25 37 64 47.0 72.4
         9         8      Uber       USA§Internet Media & Services 50 65 58 30.5 -10.9
        10        13   Rakuten     JapanE-commerce        30        34        42      13.6      24.2§
        11         5   Expedia       USA§Internet Media & Services 100 108 37 8.2 -65.9
        12         6§Booking Holdings USA Internet Media & Services 93 96 35 4.0 -63.3
        13        11    Airbnb       USA§Internet Media & Services 29 38 24 29.3 -37.1
Companies above 2,035 2,399 2,890 17.9 20.5

https://unctad.org/news/...-267-trillion-covid-19-boosts-online-sales
 

Amazon has about the 14-fold GMV of Rakuten, but the 91-fold market-cap.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RKUNY?p=RKUNY

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN?p=AMZN&.tsrc=fin-srch
 

How 5G and Open RAN are changing the economics of wireless

The parts of cellular networks closest to the user were expensive and proprietary, but with 5G, they are opening up.

When the U.S. military drops into a hot zone, one of the first orders of business is to set up a communications network. These networks look and work a lot like a traditional wireless network, including a powerful antenna, switching hardware, and other infrastructure, all designed to be used privately and securely. Until recently, once any intelligence was captured, it would have to be beamed back to the U.S. for processing, then returned to the field with analysis attached. And that's an awfully slow process. By the time all that information was shipped halfway around the world—twice—it may have become outdated and the potential target may have moved on.

A new set of policies and standards collectively known as Open RAN is now changing all of that. Rather than having to send data elsewhere for processing, the U.S. Department of Defense—and anyone, really—can swap out formerly proprietary hardware that was part of the telco network with their own equipment. The upshot is that the DoD can now install its own servers and process data on the fly and at the edge, wherever its forces happen to be, reducing latency, increasing reliability, and—the kicker—doing all of this for a lot less money.

The RAN is the edge of the telecom network, consisting of the cell tower you see on the side of the highway as well as the computing devices on it and connected directly to it. All device access to the network, both cell phones and the Internet of Things, goes through the RAN.

RAN hardware has been extremely expensive and available only from a small number of vendors. Because 5G networks use radio frequencies that require a large increase in the number of cells and therefore the number of RANs, a new set of policies and standards collectively known as Open RAN has emerged to standardize the design. The result will be lower costs and a burst of innovation.

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/...-of-wireless-2104.html
 

 

I am sure, that Viber had won users from Whatsapp since January

"Audience of messengers in Russia 2021, by application

Published by D. Elagina, Apr 21, 2021

The most popular messenger application by number of monthly users in Russia as of January was WhatsApp, with an audience of over 74 million. Viber ranked second with more than 37 million users per month. Telegram, which was unblocked by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media of Russia (Roskomnadzor) in June 2020, was placed third with approximately 32 million users."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065027/...enger-audience-by-app/  

Our FinTech businesses have maintained stable revenue and profit growth

Our FinTech segment consists of a diverse portfolio of financial services with stable revenue and profit growth. Revenue for our FinTech segment grew from ¥296,066 million for the year ended December 31, 2016 to ¥576,195 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, representing a CAGR of 18.1%, and segment profit increased from ¥65,587 million for the year ended December 31, 2016 to ¥81,291 million for the year ended December 31, 2020. Rakuten Card was the most popular credit card in Japan with GTV of ¥11.6 trillion for the year ended December 31, 2020 (with a year-over-year growth rate in shopping GTV for the year ended December 31, 2020 that was 28% higher than the credit card industry’s average rate according to METI). Over the years ended December 31, 2016 to December 31, 2020, we have successfully controlled credit costs for Rakuten Card, consistently maintaining a ratio of expenses related to doubtful accounts of roughly 2%, and the complementary nature of our FinTech businesses has allowed Rakuten Card assets held through Rakuten Bank to serve as funding sources through securitization, further contributing to increased profitability for the Rakuten group. As of January 2021, Rakuten Bank became the first online-only bank in Japan to reach 10 million accounts. This was an increase from approximately 5.35 million accounts as of March 31, 2016 and represents an increasingly accelerated pace of user acquisition. Rakuten Securities had the highest number of new account openings among Japan’s online-only banks for three years in a row based on public disclosure materials, with approximately 600,000, 700,000 and 1,300,000 new account openings for the 2018, 2019 and 2020 calendar years, respectively (compared to approximately 400,000, 400,000 and 800,000 new account openings for SBI Securities Co., Ltd. for the 2018, 2019 and 2020 calendar years, respectively).

https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/...shx?App=Prospectus&FileID=51822
 

With a leading position in Japan’s e-commerce market, Rakuten Ichiba is well-positioned to capture further growth

The total GMS of our domestic e-commerce businesses was ¥4.5 trillion for the year ended December 31, 2020. Japan’s e-commerce industry grew at a 12.1% CAGR from the year ended December 31, 2015 to the year ended December 31, 2020, according to FUJI KEIZAI CO., LTD., and sales from Rakuten Ichiba constitute a significant portion of our GMS. During the ongoing COVID-19pandemic, interest in e-commerce in Japan has increased due to changes in consumer behavior resulting from “stay-at-home” policies and health concerns, leading to significantly accelerated growth, with total GMS for our domestic e-commerce businesses growing 19.9% in the year ended December 31, 2020 compared to the previous year and surpassing ¥4 trillion for the first time. However, Japan’s e-commerce penetration rate of 6.8% is still relatively low compared to the United States (11.0%) and China (36.6%) (according to a report issued by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, or METI, in 2019), and we believe Japan’s e-commerce industry will continue to grow.

https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/...shx?App=Prospectus&FileID=51822
 

Relationship between Breakdown of Revenue and Segment Revenue
For the year ended December 31, 2020 (Millions of Yen)

Segment: Internet Services FinTech Mobile Total

Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Travel ¥310,940 ¥— ¥— ¥310,490

Rakuten 24 (former Soukai Drug and Kenko.com) 85,856 — — 85,856

Rakuten Rewards 78,598 — — 78,598

Rakuten Books 52,660 — — 52,660

OverDrive 17,937 — — 17,937

Rakuten Card — 183,480 — 183,480

Rakuten Bank — 76,855 — 76,855

Rakuten Securities — 66,197 — 66,197

Rakuten General Insurance — 54,801 — 54,801

Rakuten Life Insurance — 37,797 — 37,797

Rakuten Mobile — — 125,306 125,306

Others 246,136 45,625 73,350 365,111

Total 792,127 464,755 198,656 1,455,538

https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/...shx?App=Prospectus&FileID=51822  

vorwerfen muss ist, dass sie diese umfassenden Informationen in einem über 600 Seiten umfassenden Prospekt erst dann gegeben haben, als sie einen Milliarden-Dollar-Kredit aufnehmen.

Und wenn man das mit den nachstehenden ersten Adressen über die Bühne bringen will, geht das für uns Investoren glücklicherweise nicht anders:

Goldman Sachs International
Morgan Stanley
Daiwa Capital Markets Europe
BofA Securities
Mizuho Securities
SMBC NIKKO
Citigroup

Und nur so erfährt man in den Angaben unter 6694, was man in den normalen Geschäftsberichten nicht erfährt, dass im Bereich Internet Services 246,136 Millionen Yen (ca. 2,26 Milliarden Dollar) im Bereich "Others" anfallen, wobei hier Advertising den größten Anteil haben dürfte und trotz dieser Info immer noch viel geraten werden muss.

Meines Erachtens ist der Grund für diese Geheimniskrämerei, dass man mit Kapitalerhöhungen nichts am Hut hatte und den bestimmenden Großaktionären um den CEO Mikitani die Kursentwicklung egal war - dass es dann doch zu einer kam, war m.E. nicht langfristig geplant.  

immerhin 2,26 Milliarden Dollar Umsatz ist, kann man auch nicht abschätzen - da er im Rechnungswesen mit einer Gegenüberstellung der Aufwendungen und einer sich anschließenden Gewinnermittlung nicht auftaucht.  

Rakuten Overview

We are a leading e-commerce company in Japan in terms of Gross Merchandise Sales, or GMS, for e-commerce product sales in 2020, according to FUJI KEIZAI CO., LTD. Under the concept of “single brand, single membership,” we seek to integrate our core businesses as part of our “Rakuten Ecosystem” business model through which Rakuten members can access a wide variety of our services with a single Rakuten ID and participate in a single loyalty program. See “Business—Our Business Operations—Membership and Incentive Programs.”

We operate Rakuten Ichiba, one of Japan’s two largest e-commerce platforms based on product sales in 2020, according to FUJI KEIZAI CO., LTD., and Rakuten Travel, one of Japan’s two leading online travel agencies in terms of Gross Transaction Value, or GTV, according to the Japan Tourism Agency, or the JTA. We are expanding overseas to establish several e-commerce platforms using a similar B2B2C marketplace model. We also offer e-books, e-book readers and online video-streaming and music-streaming services. We provide online financial services, including credit card, online banking, online securities, life insurance, general insurance, electronic payments and cryptocurrency trading services. We launched the world’s first end-to-end, fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network in April 2020 and began offering high-speed 5G service in September 2020. As part of our marketing strategy to bring our Internet-based services to a wider segment of the Japanese population, we also operate a professional baseball team in Japan, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, a professional soccer team in Japan, Vissel Kobe, and we have partnerships with FC Barcelona, one of the world’s most esteemed soccer clubs, and the Golden State Warriors, a leading team in the National Basketball Association, in order to boost our brand recognition around the globe. Global GTV for the Rakuten group, including transactions in our domestic and overseas e-commerce, Rakuten Travel, Rakuten Card and Rakuten Edy businesses, reached ¥22.3 trillion for the year ended December 31, 2020.

We divide our operations into three segments:

Internet Services: includes businesses running various e-commerce sites such as our primary online shopping platform, Rakuten Ichiba, online cash back sites and online travel booking sites, along with businesses for sales of advertising on these sites and our businesses related to professional sports teams.

FinTech: includes businesses engaged in providing services over the Internet such as credit cards, online banking, online securities, life insurance, general insurance, electronic payments and cryptocurrency trading.

Mobile: includes businesses engaged in communication and messaging services, such as our MNO business (and also includes our MVNO business, which is no longer accepting new service activations) and our mobile messaging and VoIP businesses. Our Mobile segment also includes our digital contents businesses such as our e-book business and video and music streaming services.

Our consolidated revenue was ¥1,101,480 million, ¥1,263,932 million and ¥1,455,538 million for the years ended December 31, 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively.

https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/...shx?App=Prospectus&FileID=51822
 

Rakuten Mobile achieved 1.77 Gbps throughput in a recent test on its millimeter wave network in Japan.

Altiostar touted performance and automation capabilities of the virtualized cloud-native 5G network, which launched in September using the vendor’s Open vRAN software. Rakuten has an equity stake in Altiostar.

“This is a significant milestone for the Rakuten Mobile and Altiostar partnership towards commercial realization of a high performing, cloud-native 5G RAN architecture,” said Ashraf Dahod, CEO of Altiostar, in a statement. “The Altiostar container-based solution allows Rakuten Mobile to quickly provision new sites and turn up service for a customer in record time."

The announcement was light on details about the test, which took place in December, but noted the download speed was a gigabit higher than average download speeds in Japan based on Q3 speed tests from Ookla. Those results showed the fastest 10% of users in Japan saw average download speeds of 719.42 Mbps.

That’s a big jump from 4G LTE as Opensignal in September showed Rakuten Mobile’s user speeds were much slower than the average of Japan’s three other wireless carriers – at just 21.6 Mbps compared to 46.9 Mbps. A November report from Tutela showed users were getting a better experience when connected to Rakuten’s own 4G network, but speeds dragged as users roamed on other carrier’s networks more than 45% of the time because of limited coverage.

More recently in February, Opensignal reported large increases in the share of connections to Rakuten’s own network as the operator continued to build out – and still reported better on-net speeds versus when users roam.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/...gbps-mmwave-network-japan
 

 

170% increase by Viber in all group-related activities, including chats, calls, and Communities

A Year of the “New Normal” – How People Stayed Connected

By Lior Hada MARCH 24, 202

The shift to the virtual space was quick – and soon everyone was “meeting-up” via video. Viber felt this as well, with a 170% increase in all group-related activities, including chats, calls, and Communities.
Looking back at the past year, Viber CEO, Djamel Agaoua reflected on how Viber had to adjust as well. “We work tirelessly to make communication better, especially during these challenging times, while always keeping your privacy a top priority. We thank you for choosing Viber as your messaging app and are grateful for your continued trust in us.”

Communities were opened all over the world, including in the Philippines, Greece, and Sri Lanka – where they saw huge waves of people joining. Today, they stand at 2.2M, 740K, and 450K members respectively.

As people flocked to Viber, we quickly doubled the number of participants in group video calls from 5 to 10. Soon, 10 became 20, allowing even extended families and large groups of friends to see each other in one call.

To start a video call in any group chat, tap the video icon and select up to 19 participants.

Quick to their feet, millions of teachers and instructors around the world, started running classes via video calls and turning Viber group chats into their main form of communication with their students.
Teaching via a group video call on Viber is easy. There is no time-limit and video calls are completely free. This means your yoga class can be as relaxing as it needs to be, without a session expiry message waiting to interfere.

Having adjusted to the “new normal”, teachers and instructors have new routines centered around virtual classrooms and group chats, to great successes – showing the importance of innovation and resourcefulness.

We want to thank the hundreds of millions of people around the world who put their trust in Viber, to keep them connected to their loved ones during these challenging times.

https://www.viber.com/en/blog/2021-03-24/...-people-stayed-connected/