Rakuten is Viber offers for $ 900 million - ZDNet

Business: Japanese Rakuten announced the acquisition of the messaging service Viber for $ 900 million. Present on all desktop and mobile platforms, Viber claims 300 million users.

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Japanese Internet giant Rakuten, mother PriceMinister house in France, just offer a great catch, putting his hand on Viber for $ 900 million (€ 661 million at current prices).

src=”http://www.zdnet.fr/i/edit/ne/2014/01/viber_140x105.jpg” Viber Media is currently held by three largest shareholders in the amount of 79%, the rest belonging to eight other smaller shareholders, including employees of the company .

$ 3 per subscriber

Viber is a free service calls and VoIP close to Skype available on the desktop OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) and mobile OS (Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Symbian, S40 messaging Bada ). It also works well as via WiFi 3G/4G cellular networks has 300 million users in 193 countries.

Each

Viber users is “paid” $ 3 by the Japanese giant … What might seem expensive, especially as Viber is struggling to monetize its application.

For Rakuten, this acquisition is to add a new activity to an already deep pockets. The group is present in many areas on the Internet, including e-commerce, electronic books via Kobo, travel, banking, media or online marketing. In 2012, the group had invested $ 100 million in Pinterest. (Eureka Press)