Viber sold to Japan based E-commerce company Rakuten Inc. for $900 million

Viber is the worlds most widely used calling app which is currently available on Android, IOS and Windows Phone. On the other hand, Rakuten is an online Japanese E-commerce company which has its own online bank, travel service and a shopping website. Viber has more than 300 million user worldwide making millions of free daily calls. The billionaire CEO of Rakuten, Hiroshi Mikitani, said that it was a necessary step to become
the worlds number one online companies. He said:

“Since our company wants to become the world’s number one Internet-service companies, a number of new digital content that accompanies this purchase… will allow us a new market to explore.”

Rakuten earns an average of $4 billion annually. That's why it wouldn't be a very big deal for them. CEO of Rakuten said:

"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.”

And on the same occasion, Viber founder,  Talmon Marco, said:

"Rakuten is one of the world's most important Internet companies. It is truly dominant in its home market of Japan and has been rapidly expanding globally. This combination presents an amazing opportunity for Viber to enhance our rapid user growth in both existing and new markets. Sharing similar aspirations with Rakuten, our vision is to be the world's No.1 communications platform and our combination with Rakuten is an important step in that direction."

Via