Categories
Close
Menu
Menu
Close
Search
Search

Featured Articles

News

Rakuten to acquire mobile VoIP business Viber

Mark

Share:

Print

Rate article:

No rating
Rate this article:
No rating

Japanese online specialist Rakuten, which runs a major e-commerce site in Japan as well as operating the Kobo eBook reader and Play.com brands, has acquired mobile messaging and VoIP company Viber.

The deal is worth $900 million (£538 million).

Image

Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten’s Chairman and CEO, said “I am tremendously excited to welcome Viber to the Rakuten family. Viber delivers the most consistently high quality and convenient messaging and VoIP experience available. Additionally, Viber has introduced a great sticker market and has tremendous potential as a gaming platform. Simply put, Viber understands how people actually want to engage and have built the only service that truly delivers on all fronts. This makes Viber the ideal total consumer engagement platform for Rakuten as we seek to bring our deep understanding of the consumer to vast new audiences through our dynamic ecosystem of Internet Services.”

Viber has attracted around 300 million registered users since launching in 2010. Customer numbers grew by over 120% in 2013.

Comments

Collapse Expand Comments (0)
You don't have permission to post comments.

Opinion Articles

ExclusiveLast week at The Fonecast: 16th January 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

So that’s CES week over. This year’s show seemed particularly US-centric, given the amount of 4G LTE mobile technology kicking about. Not that the UK isn’t making its own 4G plans; far from it. But let’s start at the beginning...

ExclusiveIndian mobile phone app aims to thwart sexual assaults

Kurt Achin of voanews.com writes:

In India's burgeoning economy, more and more women are going to work in offices - exposing them to what can sometimes be dangerous urban conditions. Now, a new technological initiative aims to protect women against sexual assault.

ExclusivePromote your business at Mobile World Congress with The Fonecast

Mark Bridge writes:

Another year, another Mobile World Congress!

It’s something of a cliché to talk about the months flying by, how it seems like yesterday when everyone in Barcelona had a Nokia handset and the dancers on the CBOSS stand were all wearing full-length evening dresses. Yet it’s also true. Except for that part about the dancers, anyway.

Here at TheFonecast.com we’ve had a busy 12 months that have seen us talking to more and more people, gaining a much larger audience and watching the mobile industry grow dramatically.

ExclusiveWill the CES trend for larger screens lead to poorer mobile web sites?

James Rosewell writes:

This year’s CES event in Las Vegas promises to be the biggest yet. There’ll be mobile phones, there’ll be tablets, there’ll be gaming devices, there’ll be sat nav – and there’ll be many other products that now include their own mobile data connection.

When you’ve got mobile data, it’s usually an obvious step to add a browser... and before you know it, consumers are browsing the internet from a device that was never really intended to visit conventional web sites.

RSS
First4849505153555657Last

Recent Podcasts

ExclusivePodcast from Mobile World Congress 2015

Mark Bridge learns about the mobile technology trends at Mobile World Congress 2015 by chatting to James Rosewell of 51Degrees, Dr Kevin Curran from the IEEE and Chris Millington of Doro.

They talk about wearable devices, wireless charging, mobile operating systems and much more... including some of their favourite products from the exhibition.

ExclusiveLooking back at February: from security scares to multiple MVNOs

We're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

We also talk about the planned BT and EE merger, the creation of two new UK virtual networks, some acquisitions in the mobile payment arena and a new Ubuntu smartphone.

ExclusiveA month of mobile: O2 counts on 3, Microsoft counts to 10 and Apple counts its profits

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.

RSS
12345678910Last

Follow thefonecast.com

Archive Calendar

«August 2026»
MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
272829303112
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31123456

Archive