China Internet Giant and Japanese Mobile Operator in Talks on Collaboration Effort
Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group and Japanese mobile operator Softbank (News - Alert) are “in talks on a deal to facilitate e-commerce between China and Japan,” a person familiar with the situation said Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The idea, according to the Journal’s sources, is for Alibaba group's e-commerce unit, Taobao, and Softbank-owned Yahoo Japan to “help merchants, mainly small and medium companies, sell goods through each other's platforms.”
China’s Global Times reports that although the two companies are still in discussions, the possibility of the partnership is very high and a signing of an agreement is imminent.
StrategyEye also says, “Alibaba's B2B platform Alibaba.com will provide services such as shipping to online retailers while Alibaba Cloud Computing will provide retailers with software services.”
Softbank itself has a 33 percent stake in Alibaba Group. Alibaba Group faces potential new competition since last week, “eBay's PayPal (News - Alert) said it will partner with China UnionPay, China's largest electronic-payment-service provider, to let Chinese consumers shop from overseas merchants,” the Journal said:
Reuters (News - Alert) also reported that the tie-up would come “less than two months after another Web-based link-up between Baidu, China's leading search engine, and Rakuten, a top Japanese online retailer.”
Yahoo Japan is 34 percent owned by Yahoo Inc. and 41 percent owned by Softbank. Alibaba Group is 39 percent owned by Yahoo.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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