Rakuten Snags Skype Rival Viber For $900 Million, Japanese Billionaire Creating Global Empire

Viber Media has been purchased by Rakuten, a Japanese e-commerce, for $900 million, the latest indication of the massive growth of web messaging.

Viber, which added instant messaging and calling for personal computers last year, has turned into a legitimate rival for top dog Skype, the Microsoft-owned social communication service. The integration of messaging into e-commerce will play a major part in the future of the service, Rakuten's billionaire owner Hiroshi Mikitani said Friday at a news conference in Tokyo.

"With Viber, we're going to link up messaging with e-commerce," Mr. Mikitani said, adding that Viber could be used to communicate in real-time with online retailers. "In the future, e-commerce will become a more communication-based transaction. Live interaction is going to be critical for all Internet services. Rakuten is at the start of a new era."

The deal will be completed next month, Rakuten added.

Viber is just the latest addition to Mikitani's growing empire, which also includes a travel agency, credit cards and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles baseball team. Rakuten has expanded its global reach in recent years by acquiring Canadian e-book maker Kobo for $315 million in 2011 and investing in American scrapbook site Pinterest in 2012, The New York Times reports. It also owns the Singapore-based video on-demand service Viki.

However, most of the e-commerce giant's customers are located in Japan, making Viber's major markets of the United States, Russia and Australia particularly appealing. Based in Cyprus, Viber will bring 300 million users to Rakuten, according to the company. The messaging app allows users to send messages for free via their smartphone, making it very popular with overseas travelers. Its' competitors include the United States' WhatsApp, Line of South Korea and China's WeChat.

"As our company seeks to become the world's number-one Internet service company, a number of new digital contents that accompanies this purchase... will enable us to explore a new market," Rakuten said.

Rakuten also announced Friday its net profit for the year doubled to about $427 million, giving the company six consecutive years with record earnings.

(Source)