Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket
Mon 9 December 2024
Rakuten Group Inc. shares surged on Monday after the Japanese e-commerce company announced that it would offer one-year free mobile plans for shareholders.
The 6.7% advance in the stock, its biggest in three months, takes Rakuten’s gains to about 39% since Japanese equities plunged in early August. The benchmark Topix gauge is up about 23% over the same period.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/...rDDAP1AfyaiLJzJd8AdFRFAm2fztyVP-
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
The Rakuten Group is set to hold the “Rakuten Travel Super SALE” from December 4th at 8 PM until the 20th on its travel booking site, Rakuten Travel. A pre-sale exclusive to Rakuten Mobile subscribers and Rakuten Travel Bonus Level 4 members is already taking place.
Discount plans will be prepared at accommodation facilities nationwide, in addition to special plans and coupons for domestic accommodations, domestic tours, rental cars, buses, and overseas tours. Using the coupons, discounts of up to 30,000 yen for domestic tours, 50,000 yen for overseas tours, 22,000 yen for rental cars, and 2,000 yen for express buses are available. Some coupons can also be combined.
Moreover, Rakuten Mobile subscribers are eligible for a rebate of up to 1,000 points for family or group trips of three or more people.
https://en.traicy.com/posts/2024120416780/
November 14, 2024
As demand grows for high-speed, low-latency services, telecom operators are turning to AI at the Edge to enhance customer experiences and build scalable digital ecosystems. In an interview session moderated by Abe Nejad of The Network Media Group, Thomas Sennhauser, CTO and Business Lead APJ, Intel, and David Soldani, SVP Next Generation Advanced Research, Rakuten Symphony, talk about the transformative role of Edge AI, focusing on open standards, scalability, and cross-industry collaboration to drive innovation and meet the demands of ultra-reliable, low-latency communications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWhgXH8xL4c&t=17s
Der Black Friday ist ein zentrales Ereignis bei Rakuten. Dies ist die perfekte Gelegenheit für unsere Verkäufer, ihren Umsatz zu steigern, indem sie die vielen Besucher auf dem Marktplatz erreichen. Und für unsere Kunden der perfekte Zeitpunkt, um von tollen Rabatten zu profitieren und gleichzeitig maximalen Cashback zu erhalten.
Seit 2018 verzeichnen die Verkäufe auf Rakuten während des Black Friday ein durchschnittliches jährliches Wachstum von +7,3 %. Eine Zahl, die von einer ständig wachsenden Anzahl von Kunden und einer immer größer werdenden Produktvielfalt angetrieben wird. Heute werden mehr als 200 Millionen neue und gebrauchte Produkte von unseren 10.000 Verkäufern auf dem Marktplatz verkauft. Diese vielen Produkte aller Art begeistern unsere 15 Millionen monatlichen Besucher.
Der durchschnittliche Warenkorb unserer Rakuten-Kunden während des Black Friday wächst ebenfalls, durchschnittlich +9,3 % pro Jahr. Dieser Trend ist bei den 12 Millionen Mitgliedern unseres Treueprogramms umso ausgeprägter, deren durchschnittlicher Warenkorb 40 % höher ist als bei Nichtmitgliedern.
Unter unseren vielen Kategorien ist die Kategorie Elektronik (Computer, Tablets, Smartphones usw.) diejenige, die am letzten Black Friday am besten abgeschnitten hat. Die Kategorie Bücher (Literatur, Manga, Comics, E-Books, E-Reader usw.) liegt an zweiter Stelle.
https://global.fr.shopping.rakuten.com/actualites/...r-en-e-commerce/
- Rakuten recognized for the development of Rakuten AI 7B, a high-performance, open large language model optimized for Japanese
Tokyo, December 9, 2024 - Rakuten Group, Inc. today announced that it has been awarded the Information Technology Award (Open Innovation Field) in the Japan Institute of Information Technology’s 42nd IT Awards in 2024 for its development of the Rakuten AI 7B large language model (LLM), optimized for the Japanese language.
The IT Awards are presented by the Japan Institute of Information Technology to enterprises, organizations, groups and individuals whose outstanding efforts in driving business innovation have produced results through advanced IT applications. Award recipients have demonstrated success in creating new business opportunities, establishing effective business models and improving productivity across Japan’s industry and government institution operations.
Under its AI-nization initiative, Rakuten is integrating AI into every aspect of its business to augment human creativity, accelerate productivity and drive further growth. Going forward, Rakuten aims to continue leveraging rich data and cutting-edge AI technology to add value and enrich the lives of people around the world.
Overview of the Award-Winning Project:
Development of Rakuten AI 7B – Building a High-Performance, Japanese-Optimized Open LLM
Project details: Rakuten has developed Rakuten AI 7B, a 7 billion parameter Japanese language foundation model, optimized specifically for the Japanese language. Rakuten AI 7B Instruct is an instruct model fine-tuned from the Rakuten AI 7B foundation model. Rakuten AI 7B Chat is a chat model based on a version of the instruct model and fine-tuned on chat data for conversational text generation. All models were released as open models on March 21, 2024.
Rakuten AI 7B was developed by continuous training on Mistral-7B-v0.1, an open LLM from France-based AI company Mistral AI. The foundation and instruct models earned top average performance scores among open Japanese LLMs via LM Evaluation Harness and Rakuten AI 7B has been downloaded 74,000 times as of December 2024.
Reasons for award: Rakuten was recognized for its contributions in developing high-quality LLMs by leveraging years of experience and data from e-commerce-specific text processing, utilizing a proprietary tokenizer and refining LLM training datasets. The lightweight architecture of Rakuten AI 7B, with 7 billion parameters, was also noted for addressing recent concerns about the significant energy consumption of AI operations.
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/update/2024/1209_01.html
1 Year 76.78%
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/5838?countrycode=jp
- Reused luxury goods and fashion items on Rakuma Official Shops are now available for purchase in Taiwan through collaboration with Taiwanese cross-border service Bibian
Tokyo & Taipei, December 10, 2024 - Rakuten Group, Inc. today announced that its community-powered marketplace app Rakuten Rakuma has begun collaborating with Bibian, a part of the PChome Online Group, to offer second-hand luxury goods and fashion items listed on Rakuma Official Shops through its purchasing agent service, Bibian Japan Second-Hand Goods, available on the Taiwan FamilyMart app.
Bibian is one of the largest cross-border e-commerce services in Taiwan, facilitating the purchase of products from global e-commerce platforms for users in Taiwan. In June 2024, it launched Bibian Japan, a service that enables users to buy Japanese products through the Taiwan FamilyMart app. In conjunction with the launch of Bibian Japan Second-Hand Goods, a new service within the app specializing in Japanese second-hand items, Bibian Japan has started showcasing second-hand products listed on the Rakuma Official Shop. The majority of Bibian's users are women in their 30s to 40s, and luxury fashion items are very popular. Therefore, this initiative will involve listing products from Rakuma Official Shops’ fashion categories, which include women's and men's.
The Taiwan FamilyMart app has 18 million members and users who already have the app can access the service without needing to install a new app. With overseas purchasing services, the payment is generally made at the time of purchase, followed by separate payments for the agency fee and international shipping fee. However, with this initiative, all fees can be paid in a single transaction, including international shipping, making the process as simple as shopping online in Taiwan.
Rakuten Rakuma is committed to realizing an innovative e-commerce platform that delivers unparalleled convenience and value for both consumers and business customers alike.
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2024/1210_01.html
Satellite cellular network provider AST SpaceMobile has further cemented its partnership with telecoms giant Vodafone.
The deal, which runs through 2034, paves the way for Vodafone to integrate space-based cellular connectivity into its primary markets, including offering services to external operators through its Partner Markets programme.
With the expanded partnership, the pair take another step towards achieving their goals of delivering reliable global broadband coverage—especially to currently underserved and remote areas.
Vodafone is one of over 45 mobile network operators worldwide to ink agreements with AST SpaceMobile, collectively covering an estimated 2.8 billion existing subscribers. Major telecom players, including AT&T, Verizon, Orange, Telefonica, and Telstra, have partnered with AST SpaceMobile to explore space-driven connectivity solutions.
During 2024, AST SpaceMobile deepened its connections with strategic industry players and investors. Alongside Vodafone, key backers include AT&T, Verizon, and Google. The company has also secured significant contracts with the US Government, both directly and through partnerships with prime contractors.
As part of its growing network, AST SpaceMobile counts telecom giants like Rakuten Mobile, Bell Canada, Saudi Telecom Company, Zain KSA, Etisalat, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, and Telkomsel among its clients. It has also forged partnerships with emerging markets operators like Smart Communications, Africell, and others, demonstrating a commitment to truly global connectivity.
https://www.telecomstechnews.com/news/...-cellular-network-agreement/
Four and a half years since its launch, operator Rakuten Mobile has announced it has surpassed 8 million subscribers, and does a bit of boasting over some flattering consumer survey results to toast the milestone.
Andrew Wooden
October 21, 2024
he firm also shared some recent wins it has had in terms of a market surveys. According to the September 2024 MNO Share and Satisfaction Survey conducted by Mobile Marketing Data Labo, Rakuten was the mobile carrier with the highest increase in usage as a main line, up 1.6 percentage points compared to February 2024. The survey included 33,106 respondents using MNOs on their primary smartphones compared to February 2024.
Rakuten also shared results of some of its own surveying activities. It was apparently ranked first in ‘interest and attention score’ compared to other operators, and when asked about their perception of Rakuten Mobile pricing plans, 48% of respondents to the ‘Rakuten Mobile survey’ found the Rakuten Saikyo Plan ‘attractive’, which is an increase of almost 20% compared to May 2023’s survey, we’re told.
https://www.telecoms.com/5g-6g/...bile-racks-up-8-million-subscribers