Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Rakuten Viber champions passion and hobby groups with enhanced “Comments” feature for community management

November 22, 2024

https://www.adobomagazine.com/digital-news/...r-community-management/
 

21 November 2024
By Michael Kozlowski

Rakuten Kobo has quietly unveiled a new colour variant for their Kobo Stylus 2. It is now available in a new white colour, in addition to the standard black one. They also have the Kobo Stylus 2 Replacement Tips – Pack of 10 soon in white. The Kobo Stylus 2 is compatible with the Kobo Sage, Kobo Elipsa 2e and the Kobo Libra 2 Colour.

Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles.

https://goodereader.com/blog/kobo-ereader-news/...n%2520in%2520white.
 

November 11, 2024

Japan is the fourth largest ecommerce marketplace in the world, so this week we sat down with Koki Araga, Business Development & Partnerships at Rakuten to find out more. Japan is a huge opportunity for UK and European retailers and the Rakuten Ichiba marketplace can act as a springboard for brands looking to break into the Asian market. Koki talks though the Japanese economy, the buying experience that buyers in Japan are looking for and how to get started on Rakuten Ichiba.

00:00 Introducing Koki Araga and Rakuten Ichiba 00:42 The Japanese ecommerce market 04:44 The buying experience Japanese expect from UK/EU brands 06:39 Categories attractive to Japanese buyers 07:38 The Rakuten Ichiba opportunity 10:11 How Rakuten simplifies selling in Japan 13:30 Localisation and agency support 16:55 Minimum prerequisites for success in Japan 19:59 Connecting with Rakuten

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cITjzL1akqY
 

 

The increase of the difference between the operating income and the net income in first 9 months 2024 will not hold up – the negative difference in the first 9 months 2024 was an one-time event and we will see the opposite in Q4/2024 through one-time events in Q4/2024.

The net income can include additional incomes like interest income or the sale of assets.
In the first nine months of 2023 the difference between the net income of negative 202 billion JPY and the operating income of 179 billion JPY was 23  billion JPY. In the first nine months of 2024 the difference between the net income of negative 127 billion JPY and the operating income of 51 billion JPY was 76  billion JPY.

The about 53 billion higher difference was after my estimate the result of the sale of assets. I believe the 170 billion JPY sales and leaseback assets were valued from Rakuten with about 220 billion and this produced an increase of the negative net income of about 50 billion JPY.

Source: Consolidated Financial Reports for the nine months ended September 30, 2024
 

Top Shopping Websites in Japan

The top 10 most visited shopping websites in Japan by Ahrefs organic search traffic estimates.

Updated monthly.

November 2024

https://ahrefs.com/websites/japan/shopping
 

Q1/23 = $76 million Q1/24 = $118 million
Q2/23 = $72 million  Q2/24 = $85 million
Q3/23 = $84 million  Q3/24= $108 million
Q4/23 = $ 161 million  Q4/24 = after my estimate more than in Q4/23

The revenues of Rakuten Symphony increased in the first  nine month of 2024 34%  to $311 million against the first nine month of 2023 with $232 million.

My estimate for the revenues of Rakuten Symphony is near $500 million.

Source: 24Q3 PPT_E  

if we compare:

Could Tareq Amin be Mavenir’s white knight? | TelecomTV
Reuters reported that Aramco Digital, the tech branch of Saudi oil giant Aramco, is in talks with Mavenir regarding a $1bn investment for a 33% stake.
https://www.telecomtv.com/content/open-ran/...r-s-white-knight-51847/

The funding will enable Mavenir to hit its revenue target of $1 billion in 2023, adds Kohli. Last year the company posted revenue of $636 million. He says that most of Mavenir's growth will come from its packet core platform and RAN products.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/...n-latest-funding-round/
 

Rakuten Mobile Expands 5G (Sub6) Coverage in Kanto Region by 110%, Significantly Surpassing 60% Plan

Tokyo, November 27, 2024 - Rakuten Mobile, Japan’s newest and most modern mobile network, today announced that it has expanded its 5G (Sub6) network coverage area in the Kanto region, which includes the Greater Tokyo Area, by 110% compared to January 2024, as part of the company’s efforts to improve network quality for customers.

The expansion in 5G coverage comes as the result of software upgrades that have increased traffic capacity for Rakuten Mobile’s 5G (Sub6) base stations. Additionally, radio transmission output has been increased following the easing of measures preventing interference between mobile wireless networks and satellite communications in shared bandwidth frequencies, further expanding the 5G (Sub6) coverage area. Combined, these efforts have increased the 5G network coverage area in the Kanto region by 110%, significantly surpassing the company’s plan to increase coverage by 60% by the end of 2024.

Outside of the Kanto region, Rakuten Mobile has implemented similar measures to expand its 5G (Sub6) network coverage area in the Nagoya and Osaka regions, where the company has improved 5G traffic per cell and increased the capacity of its 5G (Sub6) base stations.

Since launching 5G services in September 2020, Rakuten Mobile has deployed 17,494 5G outdoor base stations across all 47 prefectures in Japan as of the end of September 2024, with Massive MIMO utilized in more than 80% of its 5G network. One of the benefits of its fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network based on Open RAN standards is the ability to quickly extend beamforming functions in Massive MIMO by upgrading base station software running on the virtualized platform.

Going forward, Rakuten Mobile plans to gradually expand base station capacity and 5G coverage in Kyushu, Okinawa and other areas through similar measures starting in January 2025.

Rakuten Mobile is committed to further enhancing its nationwide mobile network quality so that customers can enjoy best-in-class mobile services anywhere in Japan.

https://corp.mobile.rakuten.co.jp/english/news/...20241127_01_lang_en
 

Rakuten Mobile has accelerated new subscriber wins since the beginning of 2024 due to 5G network improvements

November 27, 2024 by

Ben Ives, Robert Wyrzykowski

Rakuten Mobile is a great example of a mobile operator that improved the consistency of its services while also reaching the milestone of 8 million subscribers on its network — winning from both MNOs, their sub-brands, and standalone MVNOs in the Japanese market.

Key Findings:

Rakuten Mobile’s Consistent Quality improved significantly in 2023. Due to its network investments and enhancements, its Consistent Quality score is now above standalone MVNOs and MNOs sub-brands (also known as flanker brands).

Rakuten Mobile is winning more subscribers. Compared to 2022 and 2023, Rakuten Mobile’s win share has grown from 10.6% to 18% in 2024 compared to 2023.

In 2024, a larger share of Rakuten Mobile switching wins is coming from MVNOs and MNO sub-brands than in prior years. On a year-on-year basis, Rakuten Mobile is increasing its ratio of the number of new subscribers on its network compared to the number of previous customers who moved to other operators.

Since its launch in 2020, Rakuten Mobile has made significant progress in delivering a competitive network experience. When we analyzed its performance in December 2020, Rakuten Mobile users spent just 48.3% of their time on the operator’s own Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN). In a follow-up report, we showed that this percentage increased to 94.1% in Q2 2023. Network enhancements have been a priority for Rakuten Mobile and these have improved our users’ 5G experience.

https://www.opensignal.com/2024/11/27/...ng-of-2024-due-to-5g-network
 

Rakuten: Q3 Marks A Profitability Inflection Point

Nov. 15, 2024

Summary

Rakuten achieved positive quarterly operating profit for the first time in 17 quarters, with an operating income of JPY 537 million for Q3 2024.

RKUNY suffered from operating losses for four straight years running in the 2020-2023 time frame, and I expect a turnaround with expectations of positive operating profit for Rakuten in 2025.

I stick to my existing Buy rating for Rakuten, as it has reached a profitability inflection point and is deserving of higher valuations.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/...ty-inflection-point-reiterate-buy
 

Forget performance — the only three goals for AI-native 6G systems that matter

October 7, 2024

For Rakuten Mobile’s SVP of Next Generation Advanced Research, the key is to decouple 6G workloads from the cloud-native platform

In a recent article, RCR Wireless News laid out the definition of AI-native as it pertains to 6G; however, in an even more recent conversation with Rakuten Mobile’s Senior Vice President of Next Generation Advanced Research David Soldani, that definition was challenged, or at least, expanded upon.

Soldani’s main critique of current ideations around AI-native is that it’s been mostly focused on enhancing network infrastructure with AI capabilities to improve performance. “But I don’t care about performance,” he told RCR. “We already have excellent speed and latency… It’s very difficult to find new use cases enabled by the current view of how AI should be used within next gen systems.”

Instead, he offered: “AI-native will mean that the workload has the ability to be integrated seamlessly through APIs to my AI capabilities.” He added that the conversation must shift towards evolving our 5G/5G-A workloads in the direction of achieving three key goal indicators: improve revenues; reduce costs; and reduce risks. Anything else, he said, isn’t really of any concern to him.

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20241007/fundamentals/...tems-that-matter
 

The boost in Consistent Quality scores happened just before Rakuten Mobile’s jump in Win Share performance at the beginning of 2024. In 2023, Rakuten Mobile accounted for just 10.6% of total mobile switching wins, while in 2024 so far, that share jumped to 18% of total switching wins. Win share reflects the percentage of competitive switching gross adds in the market won by the operator — i.e., how many switchers on the market have been attracted by the operator.

https://www.opensignal.com/2024/11/27/...ng-of-2024-due-to-5g-network
 

Compared to 2022 and 2023, Rakuten Mobile wins switchers from MNOs, MNO sub-brands, and standalone MVNOs at a higher rate than in previous years. The operator’s ratios of new subscribers to users who switched to their competition — known as Opensignal’s Wins Per Loss (WPL) metric — sit at 3.3 for MNOs, 2.5 for MNO sub-brands, and 2.3 for MVNOs. These figures mean that, for example, for every switcher Rakuten Mobile loses to other Japanese MNOs (au, NTT docomo, or SoftBank), it gains 3.3 new customers who choose to migrate to Rakuten Mobile from other Japanese MNOs.

https://www.opensignal.com/2024/11/27/...ng-of-2024-due-to-5g-network
 

Data is the new gold: Telcos leverage data to drive innovation and customer trust

November 14, 2024

Data is the new gold – and in telecom, data is rapidly transforming how operators enhance customer experiences, increase revenue, and improve retention. Asif Muhammad Iqbal, Head of Data and AI CoE, Maxis, and Faiq Khan, SVP of Global Sales OSS BU, Rakuten Symphony, highlight the potential of data and AI in telecom’s evolution, in an interview conducted by Abe Nejad, Publisher of The Network Media Group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQNHMOyoEcg
 

Rakuten Group, Inc. announces of the transferring all shares of its consolidated subsidiary Viber Media S.à r.l to another consolidated subsidiary, Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd Singapore.

Viber Media S.à r.l provides the messaging app Rakuten Viber, which has over 1.55 billion total registered users as of the end of September 2024. The service has established a global user base, primarily in Eastern Europe; however, recently, strategic initiatives have accelerated its expansion in Asian markets. Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd. serves as the regional headquarters for the Asia-Pacific, managing operations in e-Commerce, FinTech, advertising, and sports businesses. This Share Transfer aims to further expand Rakuten Viber in the Asian market.

https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2024/1129_11.html

 

Rakuten bought Viber for $ 1.0 billion some years ago. The booking of a gain of 100 billion yen (about $700 million) increase the book value from $ 1.0 billion to $1.7 bilion

“By transferring all shares of its consolidated subsidiary, Viber Media S.à r.l., to another consolidated subsidiary, Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd. the Company expects to record approximately 100 billion yen as a gain on the sale of affiliated company shares as extraordinary gain in its non-consolidated financial results (prepared in accordance with J-GAAP) for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024. As this is an intra-group transfer, the impact on the consolidated financial results is expected to be minimal.”

https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2024/1129_11.html
 

Unpopular decisions today breed the success of tomorrow

All in all, while it is still unprofitable today, we believe Rakuten’s bold and unpopular telecom investment can drive a period of profitable growth for the company. Evidencing that this part of the business can breakeven is important but what is even more important is what it can become over the next five to ten years. Taking this view enables us to see a company at an inflection point and not one compromised by poor decision-making. The investment case is further underpinned by its strong reputation and reinforcing ecosystem despite the market’s fathomable scepticism.

Just as one well-intentioned law had calamitous consequences for the Dog Shogun’s legacy, missing the broadly positive consequences of his actions, Rakuten’s telecoms investment poses similar risks for the company’s reputation. The market’s concerns are clear in its current valuation. This has created an attractive entry point just at the time that the company can prove its competitive edge. We believe the company has the potential to deliver its own form of prosperity to its shareholders.

https://www.bailliegifford.com/en/uk/...-and-the-dog-shogun-10051560/

 

Road to 100M a Month! Up Close with Rakuten Ichiba Merchants' Growth Program

November 29, 2024

NATIONS is a Rakuten Ichiba lecture-based consulting service available to merchants. In this video, we followed two participants in the "NATIONS Super Advance" program aimed at helping merchants overcome operational issues and achieve 100 million yen in monthly sales within a couple years. Through this year-long documentary, witness the Rakuten spirit of empowerment support the participants as they learn, challenge themselves, and grow as business owners. A surprising conclusion awaits in the end!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOUHvJBrRzc
 

November 11, 2024

Rakuten Bank, Ltd. reported a significant year-on-year increase in profits for the six months ending September 30, 2024, with ordinary profit rising by 37.8% and profit attributable to owners of the parent up by 37.5%. This financial performance reflects the bank’s robust growth and operational efficiency.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/...ank-sees-strong-profit-growth-2024
 

Rakuten offering 12x-15x at many retailers (Dell, Saks, Walmart & more)

By Stephen Pepper

November 29, 2024

Rakuten is offering increased rates for many retailers today. The headline rate is 12x which is available at ~900 different retailers, although some are at 15x such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Dell, potentially making this a great time to use up your Amex Platinum and Business Platinum credits respectively. With Cyber Monday on the horizon though, some might prefer to wait a few more days to make a purchase.

https://frequentmiler.com/...t-many-retailers-dell-saks-walmart-more/
 

Norbert Gehrke

Nov 17, 2024

Rakuten Bank’s first-half 2024 results are in, and they have blown past expectations. Profits are up significantly, and the bank has raised its full-year net profit guidance by a whopping 22%, from ¥37.8 billion to ¥46.2 billion. This performance beat stems from a combination of factors, including lower restructuring costs than anticipated and the positive impact of the July interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). While the dividend policy remains unchanged, the overall picture is overwhelmingly positive.

Guidance Upgrade and Future Outlook

The impressive first-half results prompted Rakuten Bank to raise its guidance for the full fiscal year 3/25:

Ordinary Revenue: ¥178.5 billion (+29.4% year-over-year, up 9.8% from initial guidance)

Ordinary Profit: ¥65.0 billion (+34.5% year-over-year, up 22.1% from initial guidance)

Net Profit: ¥46.2 billion (+34.2% year-over-year, up 22.3% from initial guidance)

https://medium.com/tokyo-fintech/...520to%2520%C2%A546.2%2520billion.
 

Cabify and Autonomy promote electromobility in Argentina

Buenos Aires, November 20, 2024.- Cabify, a mobility company that develops technology to transform cities, announces a milestone in its alliance with Autonomy, a “Rent to own” vehicle rental company, which will accelerate the path towards the electrification of its fleet in Argentina.

Thanks to this alliance, which will have several stages, Cabify will incorporate electric vehicles into its fleet, allowing its users to enjoy more sustainable trips and reduce their carbon footprint.

About Cabify

Cabify is an Ibero-American mobility company that develops technology to transform cities into better spaces to live in and make them more sustainable, accessible and humane.

With operations in 6 countries (Spain, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay) and more than 40 cities, Cabify seeks to improve the way users, companies and drivers connect in a safe, flexible and quality manner.

Founded in Madrid (Spain) in 2011, Cabify has been a pioneer in the creation of a new mobility in Latin America. It has more than 50 million registered users, 1.5 million collaborating driver partners and more than 1,000 employees worldwide. In addition, it has always been committed to talent and integration with local communities, declaring 100% of its activity in each of the countries in which it operates.

https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/...te-electromobility-in-argentina
 

LIFULL Co. Expands Real Estate Portfolio with Rakuten STAY Acquisitions

Nov. 28, 2024

LIFULL Co., Ltd. has announced its acquisition of villa-type accommodations managed by Rakuten STAY, expected to generate stable revenue. This move aligns with LIFULL’s strategy to enhance Japan’s real estate market and repurpose abandoned properties. The transaction is anticipated to benefit both LIFULL and Rakuten Group by leveraging their combined expertise and user networks.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/...sitions-1034075762
 

Rakuten Symphony Cloud BU President: “Can the anti-fragility of human immune system inspire our product development?”

By James Dartnell

Corporate Communications Director - Europe, Middle East and Africa Rakuten Symphony
November 26, 2024

The in-built “anti-fragility” of the human body’s immune system represents an aspirational model for how cloud systems can be improved with the use of AI to not only be resilient to failures, but to become even stronger and more robust by learning from those failures, the president of Rakuten Symphony’s Cloud BU has said.

As part of a wide-reaching conversation on Inside Track, Rakuten Symphony's employee-facing live webinar series, Partha Seetala also underlined the reasons why he started a lecture series that teaches the fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence. Seetala is now committed to passing on expertise from a career that has seen him lead the development of the world’s most advanced telecom edge cloud – also soon to be enhanced with AI.

Across telecom and in the broader enterprise sector, Rakuten Symphony’s Cloud BU has developed a reputation for solving challenges in automating the deployment, scaling and lifecycle management of applications and5G rollouts using Kubernetes and cloud-native services. The next phase of the business, Seetala says, is to use AI and techniques like reinforcement learning to enhance its cloud-native platform so that it learns directly from production environments and automatically takes the best corrective action to ensure that applications always run - even in the event of failures.

“Can we build a system that can extract optimized placement policies, learning automatically and directly from the production clusters and then write out better placement algorithms dynamically? Can we essentially implement a storage stack that is designed dynamically optimize the IO path to deliver the best possible performance even when multiple applications and users are contending for the same storage disks? Can we use LLMs to make our UI more intent-oriented? We have a lot of smart people with deep domain and systems expertise. They are now expanding their knowledge by gaining expertise in AI. By intersecting their existing domain expertise with AI skills they can create highly innovative products.”

Seetala expanded on these suggestions, using the analogy of the human body to explain the concept of “anti-fragility”- the idea that systems should be able to create an automatic, self-learned response when faced with issues or threats. “The human body is not merely resilient to failures -our immune system is designed to make the body better when it's attacked from the outside,” he said. “We have anti-fragility built into our own immune system. How can we extend this to software? For systems running in the field, if there is an issue, instead of just raising an escalation, could you, hypothetically speaking, also generate new code dynamically that gets compiled with a compiler that is shipped with the software? If it can compile and link to your running process, you now have anti-fragility in your system - a softwaresystem which is not just resilient to failures, but it is getting better all the time. Instead of building out code that makes a system resilient to a problem, the software makes itself more stable for future issues by learning from failures that happen in production environments.

“This was not possible before because you could not generate code dynamically based on certain inputs in the past. Now it is possible because if you can actually generate code and attach it as a loaded library into your existing running software. This is very futuristic.”

A major shift in the Cloud BU’s approach will be training AI models to support with decisions that deliver the most efficient use of cloud resources. “What will a cloud-native stack look like in this new AI world today? As things stand, we have written sophisticated algorithms that do scheduling of certain parts,” Seetala said. “They basically look at a bunch of resources, how they have been utilized, and follow rules that basically say -following all these rules, all these constraints - I'm going to place certain applications here, and these other applications there. Maybe in two years, the machine could basically do that by learning about the optimal placement. Our engineers won’t build out these rules and policies manually anymore - they will essentially train a model that can create these policies dynamically by learning from production environments.”

In order to build truly unique and outstanding products, the use of AI alone is not enough, Seetala said. This can only be achieved if paired with “domain depth”.

“There’s an interesting paradox that exists with AI,” he said. “Large language models, the transformer architecture – they are incredibly complex pieces of technology. With something so complicated, people are still able to produce something rather quickly. How is it that when something is that complicated, people can still put out a chatbot in a matter of hours? That’s because there is a library that abstracts all this complexity, effectively lowering the barrier to enter and play in this space. The challenge here is that because the abstractions provided by the libraries are so simple everybody and his brother will be putting out LLM based chatbots. But you will not be able to create a differentiated product by doing that alone. To be able to create truly differentiated and useful products one needs to actually know and apply the behind the scenes technologies such as Deep Neural Networks, Reinforcement Learning, Proximal Policy Optimization etc that drive LLMs to their own products in a highly contextualized and domain sensitive manner”.

https://symphony.rakuten.com/blog/...-inspire-our-product-development