Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Shanghai Library successfully hosts first digital book club in China

October 16, 2019

We here at OverDrive love supporting digital book clubs by providing flexible access models to enable our library partners to engage with thousands of new and existing users. The Book Club model offers libraries a choice of Simultaneous Use (a flat fee for an unlimited number of readers for a set period of time) or a per-unit bulk discount for their featured title. Special sale pricing meets the needs of library budgets and puts authors’ works in the hands of more readers.

Many of our library partners have seen tremendous success through digital book clubs. One of these recent success stories is the Shanghai Library, which recently hosted our first-ever digital book club in China. The titles offered for the book club were Class Pet Mess by Dan Gutman, Rappy Goes to the Library by Dan Gutman and The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes. For the entire month of August, all three of these titles were available to Shanghai Library in simultaneous use, meaning no waitlists or holds for readers.

Some statistics illustrating the success of the event:
The library had 7,053 checkouts in one month. That’s 3.6 times the circulation of the previous month
Number of unique users went from an average of 300 per month to 2,097 unique users
Number of new users went from an average of 100 a month to 1,749 new users. That’s 9.5 times the number of new users over the previous month
Circulation rate reached a height of 1,034%

company.overdrive.com/2019/10/16/...gital-book-club-in-china/

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Anyone in the cities of Cartagena and Murcia can now use the Cabify app to order a car to collect them and within minutes one of the drivers in the area will arrive to take them where they want to go.

Vehicles are driven by their owners, who are self-employed service providers.

Journeys can be paid by credit card in advance or by cash upon arrival.

The system is operative in many other major cities in Spain including Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Seville, Valencia, Alicante and A Coruña, as well as in Latin America and Portugal.

Taxi drivers have staged several massive strikes in Spain protesting about the ‘unfair competition’ from Cabify and Uber.

www.euroweeklynews.com/2019/03/21/...ities-in-south-of-spain/

Rahmen des Starts.  Sehr viel wichtiger für mich ist, dass das Netz vom Prinzip her funktioniert.

Nearly 20% of Rakuten Mobile trial customers fail to connect
Friday 25 October 2019 | 07:19 CET | News

Japan’s newest mobile operator Rakuten Mobile has received a large amount of support requests from users unable to connect to its network in the first few weeks of its service trial. Of the 4,500 customers who received SIM cards starting 22 October, around 20 percent are still not connected, Nikkei reports, citing a company statement. According to Rakuten, most connection failures are due to the fact that customers are out of the network’s coverage area.

To manage the issue, Rakuten has increased staffing at its help desk and explained the coverage situation to users. Some phones are reportedly unable to connect to the network from indoor locations, despite being within the network coverage area.

Rakuten previously postponed a full rollout of its service until April, six months after the original start date, citing delays in its network infrastructure deployment. Rakuten Mobile earlier announced plans to deploy 3,432 base stations by March 2020. Rakuten uses KDDI's network for roaming service in areas that it cannot reach, including underground and in tall buildings.

Rakuten Mobile opened applications on 1 October for a “Free Supporter Programe”, offering voice and data services free of charge. The initial wave of the Free Supporter Program will be open to 5,000 subscribers in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Kobe, to be gradually expanded to tens of thousands of users, Rakuten said. The Rakuten Mobile will remain free of charge until March 2020.

www.telecompaper.com/news/...stomers-fail-to-connect--1313468

First off, the stock is up 9% to $44.09 in the past two days. This comes after management told the media that it expected to be profitable based on adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization by Q4 2021. Analysts were expecting Lyft to be Ebitda-positive by 2022.

Moreover, analysts are already beginning to explicitly price in this profitability.

"We're expecting strong results and view this coming quarter as another step forward towards regaining investor credibility for Lyft," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note. Ives said "this clearer path to profitability will help boost sentiment, as not long ago investors were questioning whether Lyft would ever be profitable."

Ives increased his 2021 EBITDA estimate from negative $280 million to negative $150 million and sees EBITDA turning positive to $150 million for the full year of 2022.

Tellingly, he introduced a discounted-cash-flow valuation model, which provides precise estimates for a company's truest form of profitability: free cash flow. "Our DCF analysis supports our long-term positive outlook on Lyft," Ives said.

The main factors Ives sees driving profitability are higher prices, higher revenue per rider and a slimmer cost structure. While total riders grow, Ives says, revenue per rider should rise 7% yearly for the next 10 years. Meanwhile, Ives sees operating costs becoming a lower percentage of revenue over that timetable.

Lyft is trading well below its initial public offering price of $72. It's currently valued at roughly 3 times next year's revenue, relatively low for a growth stock.

Ives has a $75 price target. Cowen & Co.'s John Blackledge on Friday published a note that reiterated his $84 price target.

www.thestreet.com/video/...v&cm_ven=YAHOOV&yptr=yahoo

Looking back through the public archives, here are a few milestones regarding Chime’s growth:
Summer, 2018: 1 million accounts.
March 2019: 3 million accounts (“triple” its tally from “last summer”).
June 2019: 4 million accounts (“quadrupled its customer base to 4 million in a single year”).
September 2019: 5 million accounts.
Chime was founded in 2013, so you can see the company’s growth has mostly come in the past 12 to 18 months. Those growth figures do come after the firm raised its two largest rounds: its May 2018 $70 million Series C and the previously-mentioned $200 million round from March 2019.

Competition
In the spirit of fairness, I reached out to Acorns, which works in similar spaces as Chime (the two don’t like to be compared directly), regarding its account growth history. The company got back to Crunchbase News this evening. We’ve included their new number in the below, which includes numbers found in various media reports:
December 2016: 1.1 million accounts.
May 2018: 3.5 million accounts.
July 2018: 3.7 million accounts.
November 2018: 4 million accounts.
January 2019: 4.5 million accounts.
September 2019: 6.2 million accounts.

news.crunchbase.com/news/...nts-as-rival-acorns-reaches-6-2m/

With Jennifer Lopez, and former baseball pro, Alex Rodriguez on the way to 100 million customers

21st August 2019
Spare change savings app, Acorns, has attracted investment from Hollywood actress, Jennifer Lopez, and former baseball pro, Alex Rodriguez, reports Jane Connolly.

The celebrity influence strategy will elevate the app to a bank alternative

The Wall Street Journal details that the celebrities are buying a stake in the Californian fintech, as part of an influencer strategy to elevate the app to a bank alternative with 100 million customers.
Acorns chief executive Noah Kerner – former head of marketing at WeWork Cos and one-time DJ for Lopez – says Acorns is marked out from the competition by its simple products with no overdraft or other punitive fees.

www.fintechfutures.com/2019/08/...brity-help-to-boost-growth/

Altiostar to Showcase Open vRAN Solutions at MWC Los Angeles 2019
Tewksbury, MA – October 21, 2019

Altiostar, a US-based company, has pioneered open virtualized RAN solutions where customers can deploy a radio access network using best-of-breed solutions to put together their network. A key enabler of this was implemented using virtualization technologies, which not only permits disaggregation of hardware and software but also gives the operator the ability to implement a platform that allows for deployment of micro services.

Altiostar’s presence at the event comes on the heels of multiple industry-changing developments. Last week, the company announced Telefónica’s strategic investment in Altiostar as its partner of choice for deploying new network solutions globally. Read the announcement here.

Additionally, earlier this year, Rakuten announced Altiostar as part of the consortium of vendors that would power its end-to-end cloud-native network. This month, Rakuten launched its network with live users and commercial traffic with Altiostar driving the radio sites with its open virtual RAN solution.

In addition to the Rakuten network going live and the Telefónica announcement, Altiostar has recently been recognized for its contributions in open RAN by other industry leaders, including Intel and GSMA.

Intel Network Builders Winners’ Circle Leaders Board – Altiostar received an Intel Network Builders Winners’ Circle Leaders Board award at last week’s SDN NFV World Congress in The Hague. Altiostar network solutions are based on Intel architecture using Intel® Xeon® processors and FPGAs.

GSMA 100 – Altiostar was announced as a new member of the GSMA 100, part of the GSMA’s innovation portfolio which aims to stimulate new value in the mobile and telecom space.

www.altiostar.com/...-vran-solutions-at-mwc-los-angeles-2019/

Cabify seduces taxis with free months without commission for using its app

The founder and CEO of Cabify recalled that this summer the platform has already begun to offer services in places like Valencia and Santander. The idea is more ambitious: to make a "deepened commitment" by the sector during this course, something that has led to the practice in Latin American cities.

"It has been shown that customers have a preference for different modes of mobility based on their personal tastes and there Cabify wants to be offering an alternative at all times," he said.
In the Cabify calendar, IPO is a clear objective. For them it is a "further step" in order to obtain additional sources of financing, taking into account its objective of continuing to grow, although they do not have a defined date, said its founder, who does not rule out the alternative of opening a new round of financing . At the moment the company has not entered into benefits, but expects to do so "very soon."

On its future plans, and although it has not ventured a horizon, it has highlighted the "long-term" possibility of selling "packages" to customers, in the manner of telecommunications operators, which included a certain number of kilometers in vehicles with driver and another in scooters, for example.

www.onlinemarketplaces.com/articles/...sion-for-using-its-app

Upstart banking company Dave is now worth $1 billion, as Norwest puts in $50 million
Jonathan Shieber@jshieber / 1:01 am CEST • October 1, 2019

Two years after the Los Angeles-based fintech startup Dave launched with a suite of money management tools to save consumers from overdraft fees, the company is now worth $1 billion thanks to a nascent banking practice that had investors lining up.

Dave now counts over 4 million users for its financial management app and has roughly 800,000 people on the waiting list to use its banking services, Wilk says.

techcrunch.com/2019/09/30/...n-as-norwest-puts-in-50-million/

21.10.2019 17:31
Rakuten TV: Gratis-Angebot startet am 15. November

Das kostenlose Streaming-Angebot von Rakuten TV startet am 15. November. Das geht aus einer E-Mail an die Nutzer hervor.

Von Michael Fuhr

Das Gratis-Streaming-Angebot von Rakuten TV soll am 15. November ans Netz gehen. Aus diesem Grund hat der Veranstalter seine Nutzungsbedingungen, Vertrags- und Datenschutz-bestimmungen sowie Cookies geändert und den neuen Dienst Rakuten TV Free eingeführt. Die Vertragsänderungen wurden am heutigen Montag den bisherigen Abonnenten des kostenpflich-tigen Dienstes mitgeteilt.

Wie berichtet will die internationale Video-on-Demand-Plattform ihren Nutzern künftig auch kostenlose Inhalte anbieten. Mit Start des neuen Geschäfts¬modells AVOD (Advertising-Video-On-Demand) können Zuschauer dann eine große Auswahl an Inhalten kostenfrei auf der Plattform genießen, auch in deutscher Sprache.

Das neue Gratis-Angebot wird auf allen aktuellen Smart-TVs zunächst in der Beta-Version verfügbar sein und schrittweise auch auf anderen Plattformen einge¬führt, einschließlich mobiler und Desktop-Nutzung.

www.teltarif.de/...-fernsehen-video-on-demand/news/78345.html

cross-border sales
JUL 1, 2019

What happened: Suning Global, the cross-border e-commerce unit of Chinese retailer Suning.com, has partered with Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to sell Japanese goods on its self-operated platform. Under the deal, Rakuten will set up a flagship store on Suning Global to peddle Japanese products to consumers. The two parties are also planning to expand their cooperation to offline businesses such as supermarkets and convenience stores.

Why it’s important: Japanese products are popular with Chinese consumers, particularly categories like cosmetics and household goods. According to data from the Japanese government, Japan to China e-commerce will grow around 20% annually until 2021. Suning.com, a Chinese omnichannel retailer backed by Alibaba, has announced a series of recent news, including the acquisition of an 80% stake in China operations of French retailer Carrefour.

technode.com/2019/07/01/...-reaches-partnership-with-rakuten/

app.dealroom.co/companies/epic_

Verishop
Verishop is a premium lifestyle destination for everyday luxury in fashion, beauty, home and more.
Verishop aims to be a go-to lifestyle shopping destination whenever the customer in search of elevated brands and quality-driven products.

The company is based in Santa Monica, California and founded in 2018.

Verishop is funded by 5 investors. Rakuten Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners are the most recent investors.

www.crunchbase.com/organization/...ction-recent-news-activity

Verishop is an online shopping site that combines the convenience of Amazon with better product curation — here’s your first look

Connie Chen, Business Insider
1.10.2019, 18:52

• Verishop is a new e-commerce site that sells a curated selection of women's and men's fashion, home goods, and beauty products.

• Convenience and customer experience are central to shopping at Verishop. It offers free one-day shipping (with no minimum) across most of the site, as well as free returns and 24/7 customer service.

• Verishop also doesn't allow third-party sellers, in order to establish higher degrees of customer trust.
There's a new online shopping site in town, and it's ready to take on Amazon.

Verishop is an e-commerce site with all the convenience and customer service that Amazon is known for, plus the trusted shopping experience, curated brands, and discovery opportunities that Amazon can lack and is often criticized for.

www.businessinsider.de/...-online-shopping-site?r=US&IR=T

die Sim-Karte bei den Kunden eingetroffen ist, 80% problemlos telefonieren können, halte ich das bei einem Start eines Netzbetreibers, der für ein halbes Jahr kostenlos arbeitet, für einen Erfolg.

Und dass in geschlossenen Räumen nicht alle Anbieter gleich gut sind, weiß man auch - und die sind auch noch in den 20% enthalten. Und dass sich das bessern kann, wissen wir auch.

ein Interesse haben, das zu übertreiben, kann sicher jeder nachvollziehen und dass sie Schreiber dafür finden werden, m.E. sicher auch jeder.

Weitere Ausdehnung in Südostasien denkbar

Japan
www.rakuten-sec.co.jp/

Hong Kong
www.sec.rakuten.com.hk/en/

Malaysia
www.rakutentrade.my/

Australia
sec.rakuten.com.au/

Value = about $ 700 million

finance.yahoo.com/quote/PINS?p=PINS&.tsrc=fin-srch

Rakuten launches dedicated NBA streaming service in Japan
SportBusiness Staff
October 9, 2019

Rakuten users will be able to choose from four plans: Basic Pass, Team Pass, League Pass and Single Game. To celebrate the launch of the new service, annual subscriptions to the ¥19,800 (€168/$185) yearly League Pass, which offers unlimited viewing of all games, will be available for half price, while the ¥990 monthly Basic Pass, which includes nine or more select games per week during the season, will be available as a free trial for the first month.

Rakuten agreed its multi-year media and marketing partnership with the NBA in 2017 and currently serves as the league’s exclusive distribution partner in Japan for all live games, as well as a global marketing partner of the competition.

The five-year deal, which was reported to be worth more than $225m (€205m), marked the NBA’s most comprehensive media partnership in Japan and Rakuten’s first with a North American sports league.
www.sportbusiness.com/news/...nba-streaming-service-in-japan/

25% of Lyft customers who use its bikes and scooters are new to the company

With 25% of people using the bikes and scooters being new to the Lyft ecosystem, according to co-founder John Zimmer, the company could tap a new stream of users for its maturing ride-hailing segment.

First, it must get through an annual seasonal issue: winter.

“People don’t like to use scooters in snow” as much as they like ride-hailing, Chief Financial Officer Brian Roberts said on a conference call with analysts.

www.autoblog.com/2019/08/08/...H-TDsFzWR2Hcc&guccounter=2

2019/10/28 18:23:32

Taipei, Oct. 28 (CNA) Ruten.com, a subsidiary of PChome Online Inc., Taiwan's e-commerce giant, said Monday it will form a strategic alliance with U.S.' eBay and Japan's Rakuten Global Market to sell 70 million products during this year's Double 11 shopping festival which takes place around Nov. 11, with the aim of boosting product sales to more than NT$10 billion (US$333 million). Ruten Chief Operating Officer Vicky Tseng (曾薰儀) said this is the first time the company will collaborate with eBay and Rakuten for the Double 11 shopping festival by integrating cross-border e-commerce platforms. In the past, when e-commerce companies carried out cross-border e-commerce trade in goods, sellers usually had to open stores or provide services on e-commerce platforms in other countries and most sellers were required to prepare product illustrations in different languages and offer services to cater to cross-border e-commerce sales channels, Tseng said.

focustaiwan.tw/news/aeco/201910280012.aspx

Rakuten for international data roaming services for Rakuten Mobile
Via Orange
Oct 28, 2019

Orange’s wholesale arm, International Carriers, today announced that it has signed a contract with Rakuten, Inc. aimed at providing Rakuten Mobile, the new mobile operator service provided by Rakuten Mobile, Inc., with a complete range of LTE roaming services to enable international connectivity for its mobile subscribers.

Rakuten Mobile launched as Japan’s newest mobile network operator in October 2019 with the world’s first end-to-end, fully virtualised cloud-native mobile network.

This partnership with Orange allows Rakuten Mobile to provide its subscribers with international data roaming services around the world. The agreement also extends beyond international connectivity to include support from Orange professional services, enabling Rakuten Mobile to meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers.

www.telecomtv.com/content/wholesale/...-rakuten-mobile-36748/

Shared mobility has quickly reached a global market value exceeding $60 billion across China, Europe, and the United States. This rapid growth is expected to continue as self-driving taxis and shuttles become more common, bringing 20 percent annual growth through 2030.

While shared mobility is a newer trend, it has quickly shifted consumers’ preferences away from car ownership toward newer forms of transportation. As such, we expect it to become one of the most disruptive forces within the automotive ecosystem through 2030. We anticipate potential for new, more profitable opportunities for automakers, suppliers, technology companies, and mobility companies.

www.mckinsey.com/features/...obility/overview/shared-mobility

Actually, ridesharing’s growth potential in the near term is considerable. Overall e-hailing fares have grown approximately 130 percent per annum since 2013, amounting to a roughly $30 billion market in 2018. Those revenues are largely a function of three things: the price of fares, the number of users, and the miles each user travels (itself a function of total trips multiplied by miles per trip).

The first input, number of users, has been growing rapidly. In the United States, e-hailing is offered in more than 260 cities. Indeed, user numbers have been well-nigh exponential up until 2018, more than doubling in 2015, 2016, and 2017 before moderating in 2018. User convenience is a primary attraction.


www.mckinsey.com/industries/...to-transform-american-mobility

in the Bay Area
Jon Fingas,•October 28, 2019

Lyft's public transit directions are available on the company's home turf. Its app now includes routes, schedules and trip planning for public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area, giving you an easier way to minimize car use. You can grab a Muni bus after riding a Bay Wheels bike, or save the ridesharing car for the last hop after a Caltrain trip. The company noted that "many" of it most popular bike share stations and ridesharing points in the region are near bus and train stops, making this a logical extension -- this just streamlines the experience for those travelers.

The firm's transit integrations are still limited to nine major cities, including New York City, Los Angeles and Seattle. It could be a long while before you can assume you'll have these directions in most urban hubs. The Bay Area addition is still huge, though. In addition to serving a large population (7.75 million as of 2018), it could be helpful for the many people who pass through the Bay.

finance.yahoo.com/m/...-now-offers-public.html?.tsrc=fin-srch

Secure your mobile marketing communications with Viber Business Messages and ignore Zuckerberg spying-apps

Business Messages Communication is fundamental to what might be called human nature, and today a lot of that communication takes place over messaging apps. According to one report, 87% of people use a messaging app on at least a monthly basis, if not more often. It is no surprise, then, that many brands see this channel as a very promising customer engagement tool.

However these third-party “over-the-top” (OTT) messaging apps are not fully trusted: a survey carried out by the GSMA found that 58% of people were worried apps might be hacked, and 66% were concerned that messaging apps might access and misuse their communications. Enterprises should be forgiven for having similar concerns.

he Viber app itself is protected from interference – no other app on the user’s device can access Viber messages – and this extends to how messages are transmitted.

Viber Business Messages are sent over HTTPS using a proprietary TCP (transmission control protocol), to ward off interception by hackers, and Viber has a long history of using end-to-end encryption. This means that messages remain secure and unreadable – even to Rakuten Viber – at every stage of transmission from sender to recipient.

www.gms-worldwide.com/blog/...s-with-viber-business-messages/