Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Rakuten’s unique mobile ecosystem reduces customer onboarding from two hours to five minutes

Rakuten Mobile launched mobile services on its own network and put them at the heart of its e-commerce ecosystem, providing customers with innovative UN-LIMIT plans and a unique digital lifestyle experience. Based on TM Forum’s Digital Maturity Model and Customer Experience Management Solution Suite, and elements of the Open Digital Framework.

ANNIE TURNER 07 OCT 2023

inform.tmforum.org/research-and-analysis/...s-to-five-minutes

Small Cells Segment Poised for Remarkable Growth in the Radio Access Network Market
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DUBLIN, Oct. 5, 2023

The small cells segment is projected to achieve a remarkable 13.9% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), reaching $14.6 billion by the end of the analysis period.

Key Market Players (Total 64 Featured):
Artiza Networks, Inc.
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compal Electronics, Inc.
Fujitsu Limited
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Intel Corporation
NEC Corporation
Nokia Corp.
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
Rakuten Symphony Singapore Pte. Ltd.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
VMware, Inc.
ZTE Corporation

www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2023/10/05/9894006.htm

Lessons Learnt while Driving Growth Marketing at MyFitnessPal and Rakuten Viki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQqrw2e9MaM&t=333s

The Kobo Libra 2 is an excellent alternative to an Amazon ebook reader, especially for readers outside the US. It’s just as nice as the Paperwhite, with many of the Paperwhite’s standout features, like waterproofing, USB-C support, and a 300ppi display. It doesn’t work as well with Amazon’s ecosystem, of course, but it offers a few extra perks that make the e-reader, in some ways, even more enjoyable to use.

or one thing, it supports more file formats, including EPUB. It’s also much easier to directly borrow books from the Overdrive library system, while native support for Pocket means you can read your saved articles offline. The Libra 2 also comes with easy-to-use physical buttons and starts at 16GB of storage, double the capacity of the base Paperwhite. There are no annoying lockscreen ads to contend with, either. Plus, instead of a flat-front screen, the display is slightly recessed into the frame. I loved that as it meant I didn’t accidentally tap the screen and skip a page, as I often did with the Paperwhite. It also kept the screen cleaner and — combined with the wide side bezel — made the Libra 2 more comfortable to hold.

www.theverge.com/23769068/best-ebook-readers

Senior Vice President – Radio Access Network and Portfolio & Strategy Office , Rakuten Mobile
Puneet is an accomplished business leader with a disruptive mindset shaping business strategy at Rakuten Mobile. In his current role, he leads Rakuten Mobile’s open and interoperable RAN solutions strategy and roadmap, collaborating with a diverse ecosystem of telco and enterprise vendors and partners to create and deliver customized RAN products and solutions. He also leads a diverse strategic portfolio to maximize customer experience, budgeting, costs optimization and end-to-end portfolio management for Rakuten Mobile’s network division.

Throughout his career, Puneet has achieved significant milestones, leading impactful 2G, 3G and 4G business and technology transformations for Nokia/Alcatel Lucent, and Airspan. His leadership style is collaborative, inclusive, and empowering, encouraging teams to take calculated risks and bring forth innovative ideas to advance Open RAN technology and enhance customer experience.
He holds a master’s degree in international business and is currently based in Tokyo.

futurenetworld.net/profile/puneet-handa/

As a highly regulated industry, telecom has traditionally been deploying new services at a relatively slow pace but that could be remedied by Open RAN, Automation and AI, Hollingworth said. “Quite often, the biggest unit of cost in telecom is time,” he said. “When things take a long time, that creates an operational debt. From an asset ownership and supply chain point of view, that’s significant. Telecom can't compete if it moves that slowly. Open RAN moves control from the equipment providers to the people running the network.”  

Hollingworth highlighted the operational success of Rakuten Mobile’s network in Japan, which he believes has set a global precedent for effective adoption. The network’s more than 350,000 cells are managed, life-cycled, upgraded and monitored in exactly the same fashion, he said. “There were two aspects of the rollout that are very important to understand. From a time-to-market and an investment perspective, building the network in a traditional manner would not have met our requirements. The decision to go with an open interface-driven deployment came from forcing the speed of rollout. In a very rapid period of time, we saw that if your blueprint is automation-first, by using those open interfaces, you can very quickly deploy, upgrade and roll out networks. You can also start to digitalize all of your processes - data then becomes available to continuously improve how you are running an operation.”  

"Automation and operational perspective is the driving force for adopting open interfaces; this is exactly the same as what happened with hyperscalers and internet companies.”
- Geoff Hollingworth, Chief Marketing Officer, Rakuten Symphony

Rakuten Mobile’s willingness to adopt Open RAN has already been a success where it matters most, Hollingworth said. “The biggest impact we've had in Japan is our production costs are significantly lower. We’ve also brought down the cost of telecom services in the market; Japanese consumers are now spending a lot less for their connectivity.”

Those learnings are now being applied to great effect in the ways that Rakuten Symphony supports international operators, Hollingworth said, specifically by replicating the Rakuten Mobile blueprint building Europe’s first Open RAN network in Germany. “Open RAN has gone through another maturity level. For the first time, telecom is actually keeping up with the developments of the outside technology world.”

How brownfields can successfully adopt Open RAN
The panel discussion turned to the ways brownfield operators can successfully adopt Open RAN, and Hollingworth stressed his belief that the industry is now reaching a crucial junction for widespread adoption. “We’ve observed two main approaches within brownfields,” he said. “One is where they want to go completely open with different vendors from day one; they don't want to compromise on that because they are very principle-driven. Others are demanding that the interfaces are open, but they will still source from a ‘familiar’ supply chain, but those interfaces have to be verified; at some point those operators will require those interfaces to be opened once the operational maturity has lifted. I think we are now reaching an inflection point with Open RAN adoption.”

Hollingworth rounded off the session by stressing that Open RAN can also help to alleviate challenges around network performance, namely through the customization of components that can address specific issues. “Nomadic and indoor traffic needs to be addressed,” he said. “When you move nomadic and indoor, you need completely different innovation and solutions around providing coverage. You need a diversity of suppliers that can actually target those different niche deployment areas. ”The global digital world is moving through yet another inflection point as AI matures and secure, privacy centric data will design the next world we live in, Hollingworth added. Telecom is an essential enabler in that journey and by adopting the latest open technologies and approaches it can compete, add value, and general new revenue streams.  

symphony-rakuten-com.translate.goog/blog/...amp;_x_tr_pto=sc#

10 OCT 2023

Rakuten Mobile’s 5G tech road map. Rakuten as a disruptive player – how have you grown over the last 2 years – network, services, customers. What is the plan for 5G? Where are you at with 5G roll out plans? What does your team look like – how does your operating model underline your plan?

Sharad Sriwastawa Co-CEO Rakuten Mobile

Mark Newman Chief Analyst TM Forum

inform.tmforum.org/videos/rakuten-mobiles-5g-tech-road-map

Solving the puzzle of scaled cloud capabilities at the edge

By Jessica Gibson October 09, 2023

Rakuten Symphony explains how its radically different approach – combined with in-depth knowledge & proprietary architecture – benefits private networks

Rakuten Symphony is a company that truly lives up to the moniker ‘innovative revolutionaries’.
Often, you find that companies spot a gap in the market and then idealise the fastest, cheapest way of filling that gap – but not Rakuten Symphony, which is taking a new technology approach, proven by Rakuten Mobile in Japan, and delivering it globally. The company has married its knowledge with an automated approach that can be leveraged by any mobile operator, creating unique opportunities for its Symworld Cloud offering, including for private 5G deployments.

“Private 5G needs to be looked at from the perspective of connectivity as well as the use cases that it serves, explains Partha Seetala, President of Rakuten Symphony’s Unified Cloud Business Unit
“By combining innovations in storage, networking, computation and application management into a cloud-native Kubernetes-based architecture, Symworld Cloud provides the highest-performing, most cost-efficient solution.

“From a use case perspective, once a connectivity issue is solved, enterprises want to deploy more domain-centric workloads, like video analytics or apps churning a lot of data. That's where Symworld Cloud shines – it addresses network and storage-based workload needs.

technologymagazine.com/articles/...d-capabilities-at-the-edge

Viber’s inspiration for the free offering to small and micro businesses stems from the success of its Viber Business Accounts product for enterprise-level companies. In 2023, Viber recorded a 26% increase in business accounts created and a substantial 31% year-over-year increase in delivered business messages, further underscoring the demand for such solutions.

Viber’s business toolkit includes a host of valuable features for business owners directly managing their customer conversations.
A public business profile allows businesses to create searchable pages sharing essential details with users both inside and outside the app. 1:1 customer chats now enable real-time communication with customers. And, with discoverability through Viber search, businesses can leverage Viber’s search feature to attract and retain loyal customers, helping users locate local products or services by name or category.

In addition, new dedicated chat folders separate customer and personal messages for a professional experience, with a business inbox folder also available. The product catalog feature allows business owners to add and promote products, letting customers explore and inquire about offerings directly through chat.

Empowering small enterprises in Greece and the Philippines
Currently, Viber’s self-serve business accounts are available in Greece and the Philippines, with plans to expand to more countries later on. The company has also announced upcoming features like broadcast messages, voice calls, and quick and automatic replies, taking communication for small business owners to the next level.

Early testers are reporting positive results. Nene Tamayo, a Philippines-based shop owner, uses Viber to connect with customers, allowing her to provide a personal touch to conversations that foster loyalty.

Eleni Petroulaki, a fitness and nutrition expert in Athens, praises Viber for helping her build stronger relationships with customers. “From connecting instantly with customers to showcasing my services, Viber has not just been a platform, but a partner for my growing business,” she said. “My presence on Viber allowed me to build stronger relationships and ensure long-term brand loyalty with my customers.’’

Cristina Constandache, Chief Revenue Officer at Rakuten Viber emphasized the significance of the new toolkit. “Our mission is clear: to offer customized services for enterprises of all sizes. For those seeking growth, we deliver solutions that pave the way right within the app. With Viber as a growth partner, businesses have a communications platform for adapting to new challenges that arise on their business journey.”

Viber’s new toolkit for business signifies a major step towards making digital business communication more inclusive for companies of all sizes. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, Viber’s commitment to connecting people – no matter who they are, or where they are from – will ensure that businesses have the tools they need to thrive in an increasingly competitive world.

rakuten.today/blog/...rategy-with-toolkit-for-businesses.html

payment.rakuten.co.jp/news/2023091501/

k-tai.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/review/1536087.html

Rakuten gets real about AI and Open RAN at MWC Las Vegas 2023

October 3, 2023

symphony.rakuten.com/blog/...ai-and-open-ran-at-mwc-las-vegas

Rakuten Card hits 20 trillion yen milestone as Japan embraces cashless economy

17 hours ago

One of Japan’s most popular credit cards hit an astonishing new milestone: Over the 12 months to July 2023, Rakuten Card users spent 20 trillion yen – more than a 20% jump over the previous period.
Rakuten Card’s incredible growth trajectory can be attributed in part to a broader trend in Japan’s cashless economy. Including e-money and mobile code payments, cashless transactions expanded to 36% in 2022 to reach 111 trillion yen. The vast majority of this spending – 93.8 trillion yen – came from the credit card sector, which grew 15.8%.

Why is Japan embracing cashless like never before? And why is Rakuten Card’s growth outpacing the rest of the field? We spoke to Rakuten’s Card Strategy Planning Department Manager Yoshihiro Ogawa for some insights.

rakuten.today/blog/...as-japan-embraces-cashless-economy.html

Rakuten Mobile says it hopes to introduce services over the so-called platinum band – and will be able to do so at minimal cost.

Rakuten chief executive officer Tareq Amin recently informed investors on a conference call that deploying services in the 900-MHz band could be done at “extremely low” cost.

“We will utilise and reuse our existing base stations, all of the accessories from batteries, rectifiers, even fronthaul backhaul, dark fibre, where we reuse the existing infrastructure that exists,” Amin said.
“Also, the software for radio access is a technology that is owned by Rakuten Symphony. So thus, we believe that capex is negligible if you compare deployment of [the] platinum band of Rakuten Mobile versus other telecom companies in Japan or across the world.”

disruptive.asia/rakuten-mobile-platinum-band-2024/

Why is Japan embracing cashless like never before? And why is Rakuten Card’s growth outpacing the rest of the field? We spoke to Rakuten’s Card Strategy Planning Department Manager Yoshihiro Ogawa for some insights.

Japan’s cashless journey has only just begun

Ogawa is in charge of marketing and strategy for growing Rakuten Card’s overall shopping GTV (gross transaction value), which is an important indicator of the service’s performance. He believes there is still plenty of room for growth for Japan’s cashless economy.

“In 2022, Japan’s cashless payment rate was 36%,” he explains. “METI (Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) is aiming to bring this up to around 40% by 2025, towards an eventual goal of reaching a global standard of 80% in the future. So, we believe there is still plenty of room for growth. “

rakuten.today/blog/...as-japan-embraces-cashless-economy.html

Solving the puzzle of scaled cloud capabilities at the edge

By Jessica Gibson October 09, 2023

Rakuten Symphony explains how its radically different approach – combined with in-depth knowledge & proprietary architecture – benefits private networks
Rakuten Symphony is a company that truly lives up to the moniker ‘innovative revolutionaries’.

Often, you find that companies spot a gap in the market and then idealise the fastest, cheapest way of filling that gap – but not Rakuten Symphony, which is taking a new technology approach, proven by Rakuten Mobile in Japan, and delivering it globally. The company has married its knowledge with an automated approach that can be leveraged by any mobile operator, creating unique opportunities for its Symworld Cloud offering, including for private 5G deployments.

“Private 5G needs to be looked at from the perspective of connectivity as well as the use cases that it serves, explains Partha Seetala, President of Rakuten Symphony’s Unified Cloud Business Unit

“By combining innovations in storage, networking, computation and application management into a cloud-native Kubernetes-based architecture, Symworld Cloud provides the highest-performing, most cost-efficient solution.

“From a use case perspective, once a connectivity issue is solved, enterprises want to deploy more domain-centric workloads, like video analytics or apps churning a lot of data. That's where Symworld Cloud shines – it addresses network and storage-based workload needs.

technologymagazine.com/articles/...d-capabilities-at-the-edge

Asia-Pacific (APAC) Mobile Broadband Market Trends Report 2023: Ongoing Expansion of 5G Networks will Create Opportunities for Operators to Increase their ARPU Levels Over the Next 5 Years
Research and Markets

Mon, October 9, 2023 at 3:33 PM GMT+2

finance.yahoo.com/news/...pac-mobile-broadband-133300693.html

He offered up a specific case from Rakuten Symphony involving a large operator wanting to retire legacy IT technology stacks around site building, site management and site commissioning. “I think if you look at the annual reports of pretty much every operator, one of the challenges is retiring legacy tooling,” Hollingworth added. Most legacy tools have been created organically within an operator and may be called a “tool” but is essentially a spreadsheet or simple web app, a “daisy chain of many different applications and somehow it works through cultural knowledge.” It is “very hard to actually change and retire those,” he said. “And some of the companies we’ve worked with have tried multiple times and failed quite often, because the incentives of many people aren’t aligned to the actual outcome of that retirement.” There can also be built-in incentives around work that has been outsourced, and it’s in the interest of people who are doing the outsourced work to keep the legacy tools in place. But back to the example of the site technology stack. The process of designing, redesigning and deploying sites across a large country can involve “hundreds of thousands of people touching that process every day, as they build thousands of sites or refresh thousands of sites in parallel.” Rakuten Symphony offers a digitalized approach to this that Hollingworth said “accommodates existing processes as much as possible, but retires what doesn’t make sense anymore. … Everybody that is working in that system suddenly is contributing to a common database of understanding.”

With that common database in place, he explained, operators can start to run AI models on it. “You can actually start to ask which actual outsourced vendors, which turf vendors are performing the best? Where is the time taken [that is] slowing people down in different markets? … you can start to do almost automated vendor selection, automated suggestions on process improvement—because everything is timestamped and all interactions are recorded. You can imagine, then, that there are some serious insights you can generate from that, that are very hard to understand if the data is distributed and disparate across an organization,” he said.

He also offered up a specific example of how Rakuten has applied this to its own operations.
“Whenever there’s an outage, as part of the root-cause analysis, if we haven’t managed to automate it, we do ask the question: ‘Can this be automated?’ If it can be automated, we immediately put it in as a candidate for automation,” he said. “When we have a problem in the network, in the actual management console, we actually recommend potential automation to solve that–but we don’t automatically trigger them. But there is a checkbox there that says, ‘Do you want to automatically trigger this?’” That tells the humans involved that the issue has been recognized and that it has happened X number of times before with X result. That means that confidence is high that 1) such issues can be identified when they happen and 2) the proper response can also be identified, offered and executed. “But at all times, the operations people can decide how slow or fast they want to move on that, and everything is recorded,” Hollingworth noted.

www.rcrwireless.com/20231002/carriers/...%2520through%2520its

Legacy IT infrastructure and deployment models typically mandated distinct silos for application deployment and storage provisioning. In these environments, storage was managed independently, requiring manual intervention for allocation, scaling, and disaster recovery. Recognizing the challenges and inefficiencies of this application-storage bifurcation, Rakuten Symphony embarked on a journey to seamlessly integrate storage management into its application-centric solution. The result is an intuitive system where storage needs defined by the application drive the provisioning and lifecycle of storage resources.

Developers and support teams have long struggled with the “it works in my lab” predicament, where applications behave unpredictably across different environments. Containers sought to mitigate this by encapsulating both the application and its environment, ensuring uniform behavior irrespective of the deployment target. Similarly, the Kubernetes promise must extend to storage as well. Whether an application is deployed on a local development machine, a test environment, or a production cluster spanning multiple geographies, its interaction with storage must span all scaling and disaster recovery scenarios.  

A cloud-native storage solution must enforce uniformity, shielding operators and developers from potential storage-to-application anomalies and ensure that applications always have a predictable storage experience.

symphony.rakuten.com/blog/...2520the%2520desired%2520outcome.

www.soumu.go.jp/menu_news/s-news/01kiban14_02000619.html

Now in its 6th year, we have grown to become a three-sided marketplace, serving creators, brands, and shoppers. More than 50,000 retailers employ us for performance-driven campaigns and paid collaboration and invested more than $40 million in influencer marketing through the Shoplooks platform by 2022. Over 250,000 creators and shoppers purchase over $1 billion in products annually through the Shoplooks platform and app.

Affiliate marketing has emerged as a cornerstone of the marketing landscape. In the earlier days, businesses leaned heavily on PR campaigns to boost brand recognition. As the landscape evolved, a more sales-driven approach focused on metrics like clicks and sales to measure performance. This is precisely where affiliate marketing comes into its own. Presently, sales are the central focal point.
We’re excited about how influencer marketing is ascending in significance as an effective strategy to support affiliate marketing and other marketing efforts seamlessly. Over the next 5 to 10 years, it’s projected to soar from a 5% – 10% market share to encompass over 50% of the average marketing budget. Brands are transitioning from conventional social media buying to a content-centric approach, aiming for an integrated brand impact. This syncs perfectly with the foundational philosophy and ongoing innovation path of Shoplooks.

Why did you choose to partner with Rakuten Advertising?
Rakuten Advertising undeniably stands out as a globally renowned and highly professional affiliate network platform. Its extensive network of strategic partnerships with top-tier merchants worldwide and its dedicated focus on the Asian luxury market align seamlessly with Shoplooks’ strategic positioning. From a user perspective, Rakuten’s platform boasts an elegantly designed interface that is both professional and user-friendly. The evident commitment to fostering strong communication between Affiliate Managers (AMs) and Publishers has led to a wealth of high-quality collaboration opportunities with our merchants. Additionally, the platform offers periodic review services, which has proven critical for refining Shoplooks’ influencer marketing strategies.

blog.rakutenadvertising.com/...publisher-spotlight-shoplooks/

Rakuten's quarterly internet services revenue 2020-2023

Published by C. Diep, Aug 10, 2023

In the second quarter of 2023, Rakuten Group generated almost 295 billion Japanese yen in revenue via its internet services segment. The segment represents the company's strongest business, carried by its domestic e-commerce operations through the online retail mall Rakuten Ichiba among others.
Rakuten Group, Inc. is a Japanese conglomerate providing e-commerce, FinTech, and telecommunication services.

www.statista.com/statistics/1404066/...rnet-services-revenue/

Rakuten don't just sell solutions; we use them at scale in our own operations. Experience unmatched efficiency, reliability, and innovation, proven in the most demanding real-world scenarios.

symphony.rakuten.com/automation/speed

These abstractions don't dilute the power and flexibility of Symcloud Storage. On the contrary, they empower developers and operators by offering enhanced vanilla Kubernetes features like Storage Classes, which describe and categorize storage types based on various attributes, like storage performance policies, placement policies, resiliency metrics, and backup policies. Applications can thus be paired with storage solutions that precisely match their requirements, in a multi-organizational environment, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency.

By leveraging existing Kubernetes constructs like PVs, PVCs and Storage Classes, and combining them with application awareness, environmental awareness and intuitive automation, Symcloud Storage guarantees that applications receive the appropriate storage based on their declared needs, irrespective of the underlying infrastructure or storage backend. This consistent storage experience, from edge to core to the public cloud aids in maintaining the application state, performance, and data resilience across different environments. From development to production and for any lifecycle event, developers and operators can predict how applications will interact with storage, allowing for better performance tuning, troubleshooting, and scaling decisions.

While some Kubernetes solutions enable self-service, they still require a lot of command-line coding and developer expertise. This is also addressed with Symcloud Storage. Anybody can wield its application-to-storage constructs across any number of desired lifecycle outcomes, without being an expert. True self-service is now at your fingertips with no expertise required, delivering application portability, allowing one to migrate across clusters, cloud providers, or even hybrid environments, with full, easy-to-use, automation.  

Our approach to storage is a profound departure from traditional paradigms. We are breaking away from the status quo of storage as a detached, static entity and embracing it as an intrinsic, dynamic component of the application ecosystem. Symcloud Storage heralds a new era of cohesive, agile, and efficient application deployment and management. This fusion of application and storage architecture underscores our mission to empower operators and developers by streamlining operations, and ensuring that applications, along with their data, thrive in a harmonious, resilient, and scalable environment.

symphony.rakuten.com/blog/...2520the%2520desired%2520outcome.

Rakuten Group’s E-commerce business is moving aggressively

For a long time in the past, the pace of development in E-commerce is relatively slow and lagged behind most developed economies due to low acceptability by Japanese consumers. However, E-commerce is rapidly growing in recent years, and the total market size has been ranked third in the world.

Rakuten Group’s E-commerce business is moving aggressively, as total GMV rose from JPY 15.3 trillion in 2018 to JPY 33.8 trillion in 2022 (Chart 1), with a compound annual growth rate of 17%. The number of monthly active users also swelled from 10 million to 39 million over the same period. As a consequence, the Group's revenue from the e-commerce business grew by 12.6% year-on-year to JPY 0.8 trillion in 2022, while operating profit surged 36.6% year-on-year to JPY 95.6 billion.

www.bondsupermart.com/bsm/article-detail/...ctive-RCMS_275601