The less bumpy way to ride e-commerce = Rakuten (Seite 124)

[FlankerStan]

Rakuten Ichiba strong in outdoor category sales

In fact, much like other parts of the world where the global pandemic drove a surge in outdoor retail sales and participation, Japan has been experiencing a similar boom. According to one source, this year Japan’s sports and outdoor revenue is projected to hit US$2.69b, with an annual growth rate of 10.25% from 2023-2027. That growth has placed it firmly among the leading outdoor markets in the world. Japan is the fifth-largest outdoor retail market after China, the United States, England, and Germany.

Nowhere is this boom more apparent, however, than on Rakuten Ichiba, one of the country’s top e-commerce platforms, operated by global internet services leader Rakuten. From 2019 to 2022, the annual average growth rate of the outdoor category’s sales on the site has been more than 24.3%, according to Rakuten data.

The power of Rakuten

Rakuten is a leading player not just by virtue of Japan’s shopping culture, but also by early entry to the market and constant evolution. Japanese business magnate Mickey Mikitani founded the company in 1997 as an economic response to the Kobe earthquake, which devastated much of the country. Launching it initially as an online shopping mall, over time Mikitani grew it from a simple marketplace to an entire consumer ecosystem, expanding to everything from travel to credit cards and building out a rewards system with points, which shoppers can use like cash practically anywhere on everything from booking flights to buying a half-caf, pumpkin spice latte.

Rakuten Ichiba is distinct from American e-commerce websites through its high standards for retailer vetting and its requirement that retailers must be involved with their own sales, at least at the outset. Its stringent partnership program not only improves the quality and overall trust in the brand among consumers, but also helps protect brands from counterfeit products and marketplaces. It also provides guidance and resources to help brands set up their online storefronts (Weber’s landing page is one example of the finished product) and works with retailers to optimize sales.

https://outdoorretailer.com/news/inside-japan-the-must-watch…

[FlankerStan]

Rakuten Optimism 2023

https://optimism.rakuten.co.jp/en/

[FlankerStan]

bundeskartellamt will 1&1 helfen

1&1 recently said it expected to launch its 5G offering for smartphone users by the third quarter of 2023

Germany’s competition regulator Bundeskartellamt is currently assessing whether Vodafone Germany or its affiliated company Vantage Towers unlawfully impeded newcomer 1&1 in the deployment of its mobile network infrastructure.

In a release, the regulator said it had started this assessment following a complaint filed by 1&1.

“We welcome the intended market entry of 1&1 as a fourth mobile network operator in Germany from a competition perspective. It is clear that to develop its own mobile phone network a company has to make high investments and take entrepreneurial risks when taking such a step. It is a key task of competition law to set fair rules of play for companies’ business practices. Powerful and dominant companies must not unfairly impede other companies. We will therefore scrutinize whether there are sound reasons for a delay in the provision of antenna locations for 1&1,” said Andreas Mundt, president of the Bundeskartellamt.

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20230605/5g/german-competition-r…

[FlankerStan]

Movies and Shows Coming to Viki in June 2023

5 June 2023 by Kristen Lazur

https://www.thereviewgeek.com/newonviki-june2023/

[FlankerStan]

Dass Rakuten in vielen Bereichen exzellent positioniert steht m.E. außer Frage

- und ist nach den mehr als 2 Milliarden Dollar aus der Kapitalerhöhung auch ordentlich durchfinanziert, wenn auch auf Kosten einer Verwässerung.

Bisher antizipieren die Märkte nur die Verwässerung durch die Kapitalerhöhung und ignorieren komplett die bessere Finanzierung durch den Zufluss von mehr als zwei Milliarden Dollar, der in entsprechender Höhe das Eigenkapital erhöht.

Aber diese Reaktion der Märkte ist m.E. kein Ereignis von Dauer und eine exzellente Kaufchance.

[FlankerStan]

Panel Discussion: Intelligence and Speed at the Edge

June 16.06.2023

Rakuten Symphony Symcloud Leader Mehran Hadipour talks intelligence and speed at the edge Networks are changing as organizations embrace cloud and edge computing strategies to deliver robust applications that can meet strict performance and latency requirements. Virtualization and disaggregation and the move to containerized microservices has resulted in new and complex traffic patterns within and across data center hosts. At Silverlinings Cloud Data Center Strategies 2023, Rakuten Symphony’s Mehran Hadipour joined industry leaders to discuss the evolving aspects of networks in an experience-first world. Watch now to explore the groundbreaking concepts of the virtualized edge, SmartNICs, DPUs and other ingredients necessary for increasing network performance, and how to make programmable networks a reality.

[FlankerStan]

Folx Network adds music channels to Rakuten TV

JUNE 11, 2023 19.37 EUROPE/LONDON BY JÖRN KRIEGER

Music TV broadcaster Folx Network is now distributing its three channels Folx Music Television, Zwei Music Television and One Music Television on Rakuten TV in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The channels are offered free of charge on the streaming platform and smart TV app.

www.broadbandtvnews.com/2023/06/11/...channels-to-rakuten-tv/

[FlankerStan]

Using eBPF to Power a Cloud-Native Transformation

Article By : David Soldani 2023-06-15

Unleashing eBPF in Japan

Rakuten Mobile uses its eBPF platform to create custom code and load eBPF programs into the kernel dynamically, as shown in Figure 2. This makes it possible to estimate energy consumption of CNFs, derive performance counters and gauges of the transport network layer and 5G application and non-access stratum protocols, and detect and respond to unauthorized access to cloud-native resources in real time.

The ability to inspect packets provides highly performant observability tools that can be mapped to other features, such as 5G and Kubernetes metadata with access to in-depth security forensics from the extracted information. For example, Rakuten Mobile uses the ability of eBPF to drop or modify packets based on network policies applied to various hooks in the kernel or apply security policies based on application-level verbs or specific paths and do encryption with eBPF.

Because packets can be sent and their destination changed, eBPF supports creation of powerful networking features like load balancing, routing and service mesh, with minimal utilization of envoy proxies. eBPF eliminates the need to instrument pods with sidecars, improving cloud performance without any app, network micro-service or configuration change.

https://www.eetasia.com/using-ebpf-to-power-a-cloud-native-t…

[FlankerStan]

Strengthening 5G Security in 2023

March 15, 2023
On Wednesday 1st March 2023, GSMA was joined by security experts from Copper Horse Ltd., Fortinet, GSMA, Palo Alto Networks, Rakuten Symphony and Telus during the 5G Futures Summit at MWC23 Barcelona to discuss the significant security threats which have impacted the mobile telecommunications landscape in the last year. The session explored how the mobile ecosystem can build stronger security resilience, covering key security topics within infiltration, access exploitation and availability compromise.

[FlankerStan]

The importance of Open RAN to sustainability and energy efficiency

June 14, 2023

Open RAN technologies can enable mobile operators to improve their network’s energy efficiency and contribute towards their sustainability efforts. Rob Hughes of Fujitsu discusses some of the new energy-savings features that we are seeing in radios, including the capabilities of the RAN intelligent controller (RIC) and service management and orchestration (SMO), and explains the role that automation will play in sustainability. He also reveals what additional innovations Fujitsu has contributed to virtualised RAN (vRAN) and suggests how networks will become even more energy efficient in the future.