Rakuten Inc will buy back the 49 percent shares it does not own in the NT$174 million (US$5.39 million) local online shopping site from President Chain Store Corp (統一超商) for an unspecified amount by the end of this month.
Tokyo-based Rakuten will own 100 percent of Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan (台灣樂天市場) after it ends five years of business partnership with Taiwan’s largest convenience store chain operator, Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan said in a statement yesterday.
FIRST OUTSIDE JAPAN
Established in May 2008, Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan was the Japanese company’s first online shopping Web site outside Japan and represented the first cross-border collaboration between Rakuten and Uni-President Group (統一集團).
The transaction will not affect the cooperation between Rakuten and President Chain, which operates 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan. People can still go to 7-Eleven to pick up products they purchased on Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan, the company said.
Rakuten plans to increase its investment in Taiwan to expedite the growth of the local operation. The company will provide more services to its customers and seek other cooperation possibilities with local businesses, the statement said.
BELOW TARGET
Rakuten had expected the local shopping site to attract up to 3,000 virtual stores within three years of operation, but according to local media reports, Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan had only 2,000 stores as of last month.
Rakuten operates online shopping platforms in 25 countries.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day