Here’s a quick run-down on Rakuten-related news I wasn’t able to cover in the last 2 weeks (listed chronologically): July 28, 2011: Rakuten acquires German shopping site Tradoria (article in English) August 4, 2011: Rakuten releases financial report for Q2 FY2011 (in English) August 9, 2011: Rakuten China launches group-buying portal (article in English)
Kakaku didn’t just release their newest financial report in English today, they also published a press release to announce “Tabera”, a Tabelog-connected iPhone app that allows customers to make pictures of dishes at restaurants and share them on Facebook and Twitter. There are tons of mobile apps like this out there, but two things are…
Kakaku today released the so-called Management Vision and Strategy Result Briefing for the First Quarter of the Term ended March 2012 (in English) today, and in a nutshell, things are looking pretty good. This chart show some key financials: What’s interesting (and buried in the report) is that restaurant site Tabelog continues to be an…
The deal that Rakuten announced two weeks ago with Panasonic has been confirmed today: Japan’s biggest e-ecommerce company will be the first official e-book provider for Raboo, a new e-book reader that Panasonic will start selling in this country next month. Raboo is short for Rakuten Books: the company will initially provide around 10,000 e-books…
Japan’s biggest e-commerce company Rakuten is active in a number of businesses, and online recipes is one of the newest. And now Rakuten Recipe, which has been growing rapidly since launch in October 2010 and might overtake market leader Cookpad at some point, is getting an iPhone app. The app can be downloaded for free…
Japan’s online restaurant navigation service and Tabelog competitor Gourmet Navigator (listed, 2440) has revamped its mobile site for smartphone browsers today. Before, users visiting http://www.gnavi.co.jp/ on their iPhone or Android basically accessed the PC version. The new touch control-friendly Gourmet Navigator mobile site is optimized for use with smartphones and much, much easier to use…
Japan’s e-commerce juggernaut Rakuten is active in a number of verticals, and one of them is real estate. And now Rakuten has expanded its offering on the Rakuten Real Estate sub-site drastically. First and foremost, Rakuten Real Estate has three times more condos and houses on offer than before (1,600 properties in total) and now…
E-books are a hot topic in Japan currently: Tokyo-based market research firm Impress R&D is saying that Japan’s e-book market grew 13.2% to 65 billion yen in 2010 and projects the market to be worth 200 billion in 2015. Now it seems that Rakuten is looking to get a piece of the pie: the company…