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Rakuten has acquired messaging and VoIP company Viber for $900 million.
Skype rival Viber was one of the first to introduce 3G VoIP on the iPhone and has over 300 million users worldwide.
The acquisition follows a number of others made by Japan’s answer to Amazon, including eReading service Kobo, Europe-based video streaming service Wuaki.tv, digital content platform Viki, and of course Play.com.
“I am tremendously excited to welcome Viber to the Rakuten family,” said Rakuten Chairman and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani.
"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.”
