Viber was acquired for 900 million dollars by Rakuten

  Viber is one of the most popular text or voice messaging applications available in App Store, and during the last night was made the announcement regarding its acquisition by the Japanese company Rakuten. Through a transaction worth 900 million dollars, the giant Rakuten acquires a company that owns an application used by 300 million users worldwide, which managed to become extremely popular in just 4 years after its official launch.

Japan's Rakuten said it will acquire call-application maker Viber Media Inc. for $900 million, in the online retailer's first major foray into voice communications. The deal for Cyprus-based Viber, which lets users make Internet-based calls on smartphones and computers, expands the Japanese e-commerce giant's global portfolio of services, which now spans e-readers, financial services, and the baseball team that until recently hosted star pitcher Masahiro Tanaka. Rakuten has been trying for years to grow outside of Japan, and Viber's customer base—with 300 million users in 193 countries—is a huge pull.

  Although it is far from having the user base of WhatsApp Messenger, Viber offers users the opportunity to communicate with anyone on the planet using a mobile terminal, or even a PC, and the transition to a new company will most likely bring various new benefits. The understanding has just been completed between the two companies, it is not known how long it will take until all the contracts are signed, but Viber will be part of the Rakuten group and will probably develop much stronger than before.

TOKYO-()–Rakuten Inc (4755:Tokyo), one of the world's largest Internet services companies, announced today its acquisition of pioneering messaging and VoIP company, Viber. Rakuten will acquire Viber for a total consideration of $900 million. The acquisition represents another bold step for Rakuten into the digital content space, following its acquisitions of Kobo, Wuaki.tv, and Viki.

As people continue to shift from traditional content and communications platforms to mobile applications, Viber, one of the most popular mobile communications services worldwide with a rapidly growing global user base of 300 million registered users, perfectly complements Rakuten's strategy in the digital space. As Rakuten aims to become the world's No.1 Internet services company, this acquisition will enable Rakuten to penetrate new markets with multiple digital content offerings, in combination with its e-commerce and financial services platforms.

With 40 different services, Rakuten has built one of the world's most robust and dynamic Internet services ecosystems, centered around a unified ID membership database that features the enormously popular and successful online Rakuten Super Points rewards program. Viber's fun approach to messaging and high quality VoIP services is a perfect marriage with Rakuten's digital content offerings and its "Shopping is Entertainment" philosophy laying the foundation for the world's most comprehensive and engaging daily online platform. The combination also unlocks massive new potential markets for Viber through Rakuten Group's roughly 225 million global members.

Rakuten Chairman and CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, commented:

"I am tremendously excited to welcome Viber to the Rakuten family. Viber delivers the most consistently high quality and convenient messaging and VoIP experience available. Additionally, Viber has introduced a great sticker market and has tremendous potential as a gaming platform. Simply put, Viber understands how people actually want to engage and have built the only service that truly delivers on all fronts. This makes Viber the ideal total consumer engagement platform for Rakuten as we seek to bring our deep understanding of the consumer to vast new audiences through our dynamic ecosystem of Internet Services."

Viber CEO and Founder, Talmon Marco, underlined these synergies:

"Rakuten is one of the world's most important Internet companies. It is truly dominant in its home market of Japan and has been rapidly expanding globally. This combination presents an amazing opportunity for Viber to enhance our rapid user growth in both existing and new markets. Sharing similar aspirations with Rakuten, our vision is to be the world's No.1 communications platform and our combination with Rakuten is an important step in that direction."

Viber's multi-platform application adoption is undeniably impressive. The business has demonstrated significant growth reaching 300 million registered users, growing over 120% in 2013.

Rakuten began its march into global digital content in 2012 with the acquisition of Kobo Inc., one of the world's fastest-growing eReading services, that now offers 4 million eBooks, magazines and newspapers to customers in 190 countries. In 2012, Rakuten acquired Wuaki.tv, an innovative Europe-based video-on-demand and streaming service, which recently began its international expansion beyond Spain by offering customers in the UK its premier movie titles catalog and unique hybrid payment model. More recently, in September 2013, Rakuten acquired borderless digital content platform, Viki, which now reaches 65% of its 30 million monthly users through mobile devices.