Global Marketing News – 10th July 2015
Sony and Yahoo Japan team up to enter Japanese real estate market
Sony and Yahoo Japan have teamed up to enter the real estate market in Japan.
Sony will invest 1 billion Yen in Sony Real Estate Corporation, with Yahoo Japan pledging to invest a further 1.8 billion Yen.
Once these shares have been allocated, a process that is expected to be complete by the end of this month, Sony will own 56% of the company and Yahoo Japan will own 44%.
Sony Real Estate will be a portal where house sellers and buyers can advertise and browse for properties in Japan. Sony Real Estate would get involved in later down the line once a sale has been agreed, to handle the legal documentation.
The company is set to have a website on the Yahoo domain within the next 6 months.
This comes as a report by ITR Market Review reveals that Japan’s software-as-a-service market is projected to grow by a staggering 37% this year.
The biggest sectors in Japan for software-as-a-service are the money management and travel sectors.
The market leader in the software-as-a-service sector in Japan, Concur, has explained the reasons why software-as-a-service is doing so well in Japan, saying: “Companies are working to improve travel and expense management with a view to raising working productivity of employees, implementing governance controls at a global level and making expense expenditures more transparent.”
B2B ecommerce company Bizzy launches in Indonesia
The B2B ecommerce company Bizzy has just launched in Indonesia.
Bizzy, which is backed by 2.5 million dollars of funding from Ardent Capital, will sell office supplies, electronics, cleaning products, and food and drink.
They will also offer tech support services, such as one free hour of printer support if a customer buys a year’s worth of printing paper.
Indonesia is a notoriously tough market for B2B ecommerce, with Rocket Internet having tried and failed to launch such ecommerce platforms in the past. Its OfficeFab venture had to close down in 2013 after it failed to meet sales targets.
Bizzy hopes that, with its wider range of products and its additional technical support services, it will find more traction in the Indonesian market and be a success.
Bizzy has also said it has ambitions to expand to other countries such as Thailand and Australia.
Bizzy’s main competitors in the Indonesian B2B ecommerce marketplace are Office1, Kucari and OfficePro.
Half of Indian ecommerce done on mobiles
Half of ecommerce revenue in India is being generated on mobile devices rather than computers, according to research by Assocham and Deloitte.
Amazon, Jabong and Flipkart are all now seeing at least 50% of their sales taking place on mobiles.
The Indian ecommerce market is predicted to be worth 60 billion US dollars by 2020, making it a lucrative market for global brands.
The number of Indians online is growing rapidly, with an estimated 213 million now having access to the internet, an increase of almost 25% since last December alone.
Ecommerce sales made on mobile devices are predicted to total around 640 billion US dollars by 2018.
Stan Lee and Michelle Phan to promote Line Webtoon
And finally, Stan Lee has partnered up with the popular YouTuber Michelle Phan to promote Line Webtoon, the English-language version of Naver Webtoon.
Line Webtoon is a website that contains digital comicbook series. The site is free for users and anyone is allowed to upload content to the site, meaning that many amateur comic creators use it as a channel to get their content out into the open.
In order to promote the site, Michelle Phan’s long-running sci fi comic series will be put on the Line Webtoon site, and Stan Lee will assist the site in choosing a new superhero series.
The Korean version of the website has over 6 million daily visitors. The most popular comic series on the site has around 5 million readers.
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