Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Japan’s Edge Cloud Opportunity - Rakuten Optimism 2025

August  12, 2025

Edge cloud will enhance Japan’s already impressive track record of customer service, executives from Google Cloud and Rakuten Cloud told Rakuten AI Optimism on August 1. Vijay Tewari, Director, Product Management, Google Cloud Platform and Anirban Chakravartti (Oni), Senior Vice President of Enterprise Cloud Sales for the Cloud Business Unit (Rakuten Cloud), Rakuten Symphony joined Rakuten Symphony’s Director of Corporate Communications James Dartnell to find out how the Rakuten Cloud-Google Distributed Cloud partnership is enabling AI-driven applications at the edge across industries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ210o4WStc&t=3s  

https://canvasbusinessmodel.com/blogs/owners/...7Y0XLNpgT3x-enPOAnYsU

 

In conclusion, Rakuten’s earnings call highlighted a strong performance with notable achievements in revenue and EBITDA growth across key segments. Despite facing challenges with valuation losses and tax issues, the company’s strategic initiatives and forward-looking guidance suggest a promising trajectory for continued success.

https://www.tipranks.com/news/...s-call-strong-growth-amid-challenges
 

Rakuten Symphony & Odine: Revolutionizing 5G in Turkey, the Middle East & Africa!

May 13, 2025

Join SK from Rakuten Symphony as he speaks with Tarkan Alagoz, Chief Revenue Officer from Odine, about their exciting partnership and expansion plans. Discover how Odine & Rakuten Symphony are leveraging cutting-edge 5G technology to revolutionize connectivity in Turkey, the Middle East, and Africa. In this video, we dive into:

The booming 5G landscape and opportunities in Turkey
Odine's ambitious vision for expanding into the African market
How Rakuten Symphony's solutions are perfectly matched to address Africa's unique challenges.
The value that Rakuten Symphony brings to the market and to Odine.

Learn how this partnership is set to benefit Africa and potentially expand to other regions in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcGrQ8leXjM

 

Direct-to-Cell Revolution: What It Is and When It Will Work in Your Country

by Marcin Frąckiewicz on 14 August 2025

AST SpaceMobile: Texas-based AST SpaceMobile is building a constellation of BlueBird satellites designed as space-based cellular broadband towers. AST made headlines in April 2023 by conducting the world’s first space-based two-way voice call directly with standard smartphones (no special handset needed) en.wikipedia.org fierce-network.com. In that test, a call from a Samsung Galaxy S22 in Texas went through AST’s BlueWalker 3 test satellite and down to Rakuten’s network in Japan, using AT&T’s cellular spectrum satellitetoday.com fierce-network.com. By September 2023, AST had also demonstrated the first 5G phone call from space, calling from a dead zone in Hawaii to a Vodafone engineer in Spain via the satellite fierce-network.com fierce-network.com. They even achieved a 4G/5G data session around 14 Mbps downlink on a 5 MHz channel during tests fierce-network.com – slow by terrestrial standards, but a major proof of concept. AST’s approach is to launch relatively few very large satellites, each with high capacity. In September 2024, the company launched its first 5 commercial satellites (BlueBird 1–5) on a SpaceX rocket ast-science.com space.com. These BlueBird satellites have beams up to 40 MHz wide, potentially delivering up to ~120 Mbps per beam in ideal conditions about.att.com businesswire.com. AST is backed by major telecom companies: Vodafone, Rakuten (Japan), American Tower, Bell Canada, and AT&T have all invested in or partnered with AST businesswire.com businesswire.com. In fact, AT&T, Vodafone, and even Google poured $155 million of strategic funding into AST in early 2024 to help it roll out this tech businesswire.com businesswire.com. AST boasts that it has agreements with over 40 mobile operators worldwide (covering 2+ billion subscribers) keen to use its satellite-to-phone service once ready businesswire.com fierce-network.com. The plan is to start with equatorial coverage and scale to global coverage by late 2025 or 2026 by launching dozens of satellites on Blue Origin and other rockets spacenews.com. The ultimate vision: deliver broadband (not just texting) to standard phones, effectively a space-based 4G/5G network. As AST’s CEO Abel Avellan said, “Our engineers and space scientists are on a mission to eliminate the connectivity gaps faced by today’s five billion mobile subscribers” businesswire.com businesswire.com.

https://ts2.tech/en/...ect,(and%2520on%2520regulatory%2520approvals).

 

Trump order relaxing commercial spaceflight rules boosts some space-related stocks

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/...mmercial-spaceflight-102611125.html

 

Rakuten erzielt Rekordquartal und erstmals seit 2019 operativen Gewinn

11. August 2025

Rakuten Group hat im zweiten Quartal 2025 in allen Geschäftsfeldern zugelegt und mehrere Meilensteine erreicht. Der Umsatz stieg um 11 % auf 596,4 Mrd. Yen (rund 3,4 Mrd. Euro) – der höchste je erzielte Wert in einem zweiten Quartal. Neben dem starken Wachstum bei E-Commerce und Finanzdienstleistungen trug auch die Mobilfunksparte maßgeblich zum Erfolg bei.

Erstes positives operatives Q2-Ergebnis seit 2019
Der Konzern erwirtschaftete ein Non-GAAP-Betriebsergebnis von 20,1 Mrd. Yen (ca. 115 Mio. Euro) – ein Plus von 31,9 Mrd. Yen im Jahresvergleich. Das IFRS-Betriebsergebnis stieg auf 8,8 Mrd. Yen (ca. 50 Mio. Euro) und markierte das erste positive Ergebnis seit 2020. Das EBITDA erreichte 103,2 Mrd. Yen (rund 590 Mio. Euro) und damit einen neuen Rekordwert.

https://retail-news.de/rakuten-rekordquartal-2025/
 

AI-Nization: The Engine of Future Growth

Rakuten's AI initiatives are not just incremental upgrades but foundational to its long-term strategy. The launch of Rakuten AI, a free agentic AI tool integrated into the Rakuten Link app and available as a web app, exemplifies this. By leveraging user data from its 9 million mobile subscribers and 17 million Rakuten Bank customers, the company is building hyper-personalized experiences.

For example:

Rakuten Ichiba will deploy AI-driven product recommendations in autumn 2025, using user preferences and purchasing trends to boost conversion rates.

Rakuten Securities employs AI avatars to deliver real-time financial advice, while Rakuten Travel uses AI concierges to tailor hotel packages.

Affiliate Intelligence, an AI-powered affiliate marketing platform, addresses fraud detection and multi-touch attribution, potentially revolutionizing the sector.

These tools are underpinned by Rakuten's investment in smaller, efficient AI models (e.g., Rakuten AI 2.0 with Mixture of Experts architecture), reducing operational costs by 40% compared to traditional models. The company's participation in Japan's GENIAC project further solidifies its R&D edge in next-gen language models.

https://www.ainvest.com/news/...h-ai-driven-ecosystem-dominance-2508/

 

Rakuten's Q2 results also reflect disciplined cost management and strategic pricing. The Mobile segment's net ARPU rose to ¥2,474 (up 114 yen YoY), driven by data usage growth and bundled services. Meanwhile, the FinTech segment's cost-to-income ratio improved to 52% (down from 60% in 2024), thanks to AI-driven automation in customer service and fraud detection.

The IFRS operating income of ¥8.8 billion in Q2—Rakuten's first Q2 profit since 2020—signals a structural shift. With the Mobile segment on track for full-year EBITDA profitability in 2025 and AI initiatives scaling across 900,000+ business partners via Rakuten AI for Business, the company is building a durable competitive moat.

https://www.ainvest.com/news/...h-ai-driven-ecosystem-dominance-2508/