Rakuten to buy Viber for $900 Million

Rakuten Inc.,a Japanese internet services giant based in Tokyo is buying the very popular cross-platform instant messaging and VoIP services app, Viber, for $900 million.

Rakuten with 225 million global members, which competes with Amazon.com and Yahoo, has been successful with online shopping in Japan while Viber has a growing user base of 300 million registered users.

The Tokyo-based company said Friday it sees Viber, as a key platform as people are moving from TVs and computers to mobile devices to consume and enjoy content.

“I am tremendously excited to welcome Viber to the Rakuten family. Viber delivers the most consistently high quality and convenient messaging and VoIP experience available. Additionally, Viber has introduced a great sticker market and has tremendous potential as a gaming platform. Simply put, Viber understands how people actually want to engage and have built the only service that truly delivers on all fronts. This makes Viber the ideal total consumer engagement platform for Rakuten as we seek to bring our deep understanding of the consumer to vast new audiences through our dynamic ecosystem of Internet Services.”