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Viber acquired by Japanese Rakuten for $900 million

Viber, a very popular cross-platform instant messaging and VoIP services app, has been acquired by Rakuten Inc., a Japanese internet services giant based in Tokyo, for $900 million.

To give you quick background, Rakuten Group is an internet service companies that provide a variety of consumer- and business-focused services including e-commerce, eBooks & eReading, travel, banking, securities, credit card, e-money, portal and media, online marketing and professional sports. The company ranked among the Top 10 most innovative companies in Forbes magazine in 2012 and 2013. It started its venture into global digital content when it acquired Kobo Inc. in 2012, followed by Wuaki.tv and Viki.

rakuten_viber

With Rakuten’s acquisition of Viber, both companies will take advantage of each other’s global user base and members to enhance services and penetrate new markets. Viber has a growing user base of 300 million registered users while Rakuten Group has 225 million global members. Rakuten Chairman and CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, also emphasized Viber’s potential as a gaming platform.

“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.”

– Rakuten Chairman and CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani

{via} {source}

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This article was written by Louie Diangson, Managing Editor of YugaTech. You can follow him at @John_Louie.

9 Responses

  1. Avatar for wew bopol wew bopol says:

    wew bopol u-lol

  2. Avatar for abuzalzal abuzalzal says:

    U-lololol!

  3. Avatar for lololol lololol says:

    hahaha, MediaTek walang kuwenta. para sa mga loser talaga ang MediaTek

    • Avatar for bopol bopol says:

      anong connection? ikaw yata wlang kwenta mag post.

    • Avatar for wew wew says:

      Intindihin nyu na lng tong c @lololol halatang walang pumapansin sa kanya sa totoong buhay eh.halata naman oh pati sa ibanga rticle nagpapapansin hahaha bagobago din kasi ng ugali pag may time para may makipagusap naman sau.

  4. Avatar for Yusuf Yusuf says:

    Hopefully, Viber won’t be ruined.

    • Avatar for abuzalzal abuzalzal says:

      Profit-driven purposes yan, it will eventually get ruined.

    • Avatar for Benchmark Benchmark says:

      Wag naman sana masira ang viber…i think a Japanese company naman is a good company…yun lang they are plannit it to be a gaming platform…pede ba mag acquire na lang sila ng ibang gaming company…wag na ang voip like viber…at baka masira nga ito.

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