Rakuten purchases Kobo for $315 million cash
The Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Nobles Nook may be a lot more well known than the Kobo brand of e-readers on the market, however this may very well be one of the reasons Rakuten has stepped up and signed a deal for 100% of the company, handing over $315 million in cash to Kobo in the process. Hoping to push Kobo e-readers even further, Rakuten may very well be in for a bit of a winner bearing in mind they are one of the world’s top 3 e-commerce companies by revenue and own some hugely popular e-commerce go to’s. On the buy-out, Rakuten CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani said;
We are very excited about this next step. Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies, including Buy.com in the US, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, and Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, and of course, Rakuten Ichiba in Japan.
Via: Engadget
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