Rakuten Inc, one of the world’s largest Internet services companies,
announced today its acquisition of pioneering messaging and VoIP
company, Viber. Rakuten will acquire Viber for a total consideration of
$900 million.
As people continue to shift from traditional
content and communications platforms to mobile applications, Viber, one
of the most popular mobile communications services worldwide with a
rapidly growing global user base of 300 million registered users,
perfectly complements Rakuten’s strategy in the digital space. As
Rakuten aims to become the world’s No.1 Internet services company, this
acquisition will enable Rakuten to penetrate new markets with multiple
digital content offerings, in combination with its e-commerce and
financial services platforms.
Rakuten Chairman and CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, commented:
“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 CEO and Founder, Talmon Marco, underlined these synergies:
“Rakuten
is one of the world’s most important Internet companies. It is truly
dominant in its home market of Japan and has been rapidly expanding
globally. This combination presents an amazing opportunity for Viber to
enhance our rapid user growth in both existing and new markets. Sharing
similar aspirations with Rakuten, our vision is to be the world’s No.1
communications platform and our combination with Rakuten is an important
step in that direction.”
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