Japan Rakuten buys net buys data company Slice

Absrtact: The United States is the world's largest internet market, the internet giants outside the United States, after the development to a certain level, all want to enter the United States, share market cakes. Japan's electric business giant Lotte (Rakuten), the acquisition of a U.S. online shopping data analysis public

The United States is the world's largest internet market, the internet giants outside the United States, after the development to a certain level, all want to enter the United States, share market cakes. A few days ago, the Japanese electric business giant Lotte (Rakuten), the acquisition of a US online data analysis company, means Rakuten may be ready to enter the U.S. online retail market.

It must be pointed out that China's electric giant Alibaba, has also entered the United States, Alibaba operating network stores have opened, Ali Group even in the United States to acquire six companies.

Lotte has a goal to develop its business in the US, Yaziida, an executive at Lotte's marketing business, told the media.

The U.S. media pointed out that Rakuten, although Japan's network retail giants, but the U.S. market, is basically a blank. It is worth mentioning that four years ago, Lotte had spent 250 million of dollars, bought the U.S. E-commerce website Buy.com.

In the United States, Rakuten will face fierce competition, such as Amazon, EBay, Wal-Mart, and soon to be listed in the United States Alibaba Group.

Rakuten is acquiring an application software and company called Slice. This software for consumers, through the electronic mailbox in the retail website mail, comb the user's shopping history, timely notify users about the latest location of courier packages, in addition to help buyers pay attention to the retail website of some goods price reduction information.

The software is available to consumers free of charge, and slice also gets a huge amount of consumer buying data. The company's business model is to allow Internet companies to pay for the analysis of the data. Slice's consumer data is of great value to the development of online retailing, said Rakuten executives.

According to reports, slice company headquarters in Parooto, California, since the company was born, a total of 32 million of dollars in venture capital, investors include Lotte Group itself, as well as well-known venture capital company "speed of light vcs." In addition, the company has 70 employees.

Since the company was born four years ago, the E-commerce turnover associated with its software has reached $200 million trillion, according to slice executives.

In addition, many of Slice's customers, the retail site itself, this time by Rakuten acquisition, means that a competitor will master a third-party electronic business technology manufacturers, it is not clear how slice will coordinate the interests of all parties.

For Chinese consumers, Rakuten is not a familiar brand. But in recent years, Rakuten has made several big moves in an attempt to camp outside Japan's internet market. Earlier, Rakuten and the Chinese search engine Baidu cooperation, operating retail sites, but was miserably defeated.

In February this year, Rakuten spent 900 million dollars to acquire the Israeli technical background of the Internet telephony tool Viber, the tool in the world with more than 200 million users, distributed in nearly 190 countries and regions.

According to the data, Rakuten was also a shareholder of the Pinterest, and in 2011 Rakuten had spent $315 million to acquire Kobo, a Canadian digital book reader maker.