Amazon powers ebook market in Japan, Rakuten acquires Viki, eBay acquires decide.com and much more..

I have had a busy September thus far – travelled to an undisclosed location, thinking about some ecommerce related posts and digesting all the ecommerce news that is hitting my inbox and RSS feeds. Thus you are not seeing things – I am writing catch-up posts that should have been written earlier in September.

Rakuten must feel like they can’t win. They are the dominant ecommerce business in Japan and they have expanded to other markets (UK, Germany and Brazil) but in most cases they end up against one business Amazon.com. Amazon has also not been shy in competing in Rakuten’s backyard and cleaning out certain verticals. I must confess I read Marketplace 3.0 written by the CEO of Rakuten and am left unsure whether Rakuten has the foresight to be able to compete against Amazon, Alibaba and others. Rakuten has also bought business to equip itself against competitors (Kobo etc) but in the greater scheme of things are these businesses scalable to compete against the heavyweights?

Rakuten acquired Viki which can be seen as an entry into the streaming of digital content and also will play a great role in validating Singapore’s startup community. I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more startups being acquired out of Singapore.

On a sad note – one of my favorite ecommerce businesses will be shutting down at the end of September. Decide.com has been acquired by eBay and will be used in the seller side of the marketplace. I cant help but notice the irony in eBay acquiring a Seattle company to beef up its marketplace business. Decide.com I believe is going to be seen as a mark in the sand as I don’t think this is the last time we will see machine learning and data orientated ecommerce startups flying below the radar. eBay is essentially doing a acquihire of some of the smartest people in ecommerce. eBay will need to ensure that they leverage the decide.com IP as they will add massive value to eBay sellers tools in order to price better etc.

The stories that caught my attention this past week:

1. Amazon preparing to launch online video service in Russia – ” Earlier this year, Amazon also filed an application to register a Russian trademark for product storage, packaging, further transportation, and delivery, in addition to its activities related to electronic content.” Ozon.ru is now going to be getting some real competition as it is pretty clear that Russia is now getting more attention from Amazon.
2. Taking a Break or Did Kobo In Reality Lose Access to the Goodreads API? – Acquisitions are sometimes a defensive move by companies. Amazon acquired Goodreads and have seemingly blocked Kobo from accessing its API. If you are in the book industry then you have to consider that Amazon could turn the tables on you sometime..
3. Amazon Expands Goods Delivered to Russia – Amazon has started delivering electronics and household appliances to Russia as it looks to capitalize on a rapidly growing Russian e-commerce market currently valued at more than $12 billion annually. The question is how will Amazon solve the logistics issues it will encounter in Russia?
4. 10% of Consumer Ecommerce Spending On Smartphone or Tablet – “The growth in this segment of the market(mcommerce) is outpacing that of traditional e-commerce by a factor of 2x”. Mobile commerce is still unsolved but the growth currently is astronomical.However solves it first will be printing money as currently a lot of trial and error occurs.
5. Product Listing Ads Rising Popularity Drives Prices Up – I wish I could say I am surprised but PLA’s are the trojan horse that is powering revenue for Google. Images in the search results leads to clicks and clicks lead to revenue for Google.
6. DHL tries out crowdsourced delivery in Sweden – John Donahoe from eBay hopefully got a copy of this post as I must say I don’t think crowd sourcing logistics is the solution. The user experience is different and how will companies control this from being a disaster.
7. Amazon vet’s robot-powered apparel startup partners with Levi’s, opens Manhattan store – Hointer is a business I am looking forward to experiencing as I think it is a look into the future of retail. This partnership with Levi’s is potentially a massive deal for Hointer as this is done on behalf of a retailer. No Hointer branding is seen in the shop yet the retailer is leveraging Hointer’s technology.
8. Exclusive: Amazon Wants To Offer Its Smartphone for Free. Who Will Follow? – Amazon will launch a phone but it will be on Amazon’s terms. It wont be free but it will contain points of leverage for Amazon various businesses. I wonder if that could mean the end of the Verizon pre-loading deal that Amazon currently has?
9. The Art of Awesome Curation: Lessons from Gilt and Houzz – Suchurita Mulpuru writes a great post on Personalisation which I believe is a macro trend in ecommerce. Gilt is an industry leader regarding email marketing and the insights in the post recognizes that.
10. “Shopping cart” patent troll tries to save itself, gets pounded by Newegg – The patent case made against Newegg is something that I have been following. Mega respect for Newegg going the legal route and resolving this matter in their favor.

Onwards..