DoCoMo and Rakuten Joint Venture

Going Head to Head with eBay

[trillianjedi]

TOKYO, JAPAN, October 11, 2005 --- Rakuten, Inc., a leading Japanese e-commerce company, and NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Japan's dominant mobile operator, today announced that they will form a business and capital alliance to provide Internet auction services over both mobile phones and PCs.

Rakuten Auction will take over Rakuten's PC-based auction service, Rakuten Flea Market, in which individuals can list items for sale. Rakuten Flea Market will be linked with the parent company's Rakuten Super Auction, in which shoppers can bid for items sold by some 13,800 merchants (as of the end of September) in the Rakuten Ichiba Internet mall.

[nttdocomo.com...]

Essentially, merchants on Rakuten will be able to accept bids made by users on mobile phones. I don't think the timing of this is coincidence given eBay's recent purchase of Skype.

It certainly gives an interesting twist to running merchant stores on the net. I can see some real movement in this direction over the coming years [webmasterworld.com].

TJ

[bill]

Actually this has a lot more to do with taking on Yahoo Japan's auction site than anything else. eBay had a Japanese auction site but Yahoo Japan was too dominant for them and eBay literally packed up and went home. As recently as a year ago eBay was still mentioning asides about returning to the Japanese market [webmasterworld.com], but as time goes on that becomes increasingly doubtful. The domestic auction market in Japan is a bit too tough for eBay now that they already made a full retreat from the market.

The Yahoo Japan Auction site already has a very easy to use mobile site. It's been in place for some time now. NTT DoCoMo's involvement in this adds a real new twist. DoCoMo's "walled garden" iMode menus are a goldmine for those few companies deemed worthy of directory placement. Simply placing this new Rakuten service prominently on the iMode menu could make a huge difference in the market...at least that's what they're hoping.