Viber acquired by e-commerce giant Rakuten for $900 million!

This is kind of interesting. The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the popular voice call app Viber has agreed to a deal to be acquired by Rakuten for $900 million. For those unfamiliar with the e-commerce giant, it’s essentially Japan’s version of Amazon.

Viber is available on all major mobile and desktop platforms, and is one of Skype’s biggest competitors with over 300 million users worldwide. It was one of the first apps to allow 3G VoIP on the iPhone and it now supports land-line calls, messages and even push-to-talk…

Here’s the report from The Journal:

“Japan’s Rakuten Inc. 4755.TO +1.22% said it will acquire call-application maker Viber Media Inc. for $900 million, in the online retailer’s first major foray into voice communications.

The deal for Cyprus-based Viber, which lets users make Internet-based calls on smartphones and computers, expands the Japanese e-commerce giant’s global portfolio of services, which now spans e-readers, financial services, and the baseball team that until recently hosted star pitcher Masahiro Tanaka.”

And their statements from the press release:

“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.”

Viber CEO and Founder, Talmon Marco, underlined these synergies:

“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.”

While the $900 million offer seems a bit small in comparison to other tech acquisition deals, it’s worth noting that Viber doesn’t make much money. It’s only recently began generating revenue via sticker sales and Viber Out, which allows users to call non-Viber numbers for a fee.

Rakuten, for its part, generates about $65 billion in revenue per year, and has recently made major investments in Pinterest, and Canadian e-book firm Kobo. There’s no word yet on its plans for Viber, but it appears that it’s going to continue to operate it as a standalone service.

BlackBerry fires CEO Thorsten Heins, scraps buyout plan!

As a long-time competitor of, and what many believe to be a casualty of, the iPhone, we’ve been keeping a close eye on BlackBerry’s situation over the past several months. The last we heard, the company had agreed to sell itself to Fairfax Financial Holdings for $4.7 billion.

But apparently that’s no longer the plan. In a bit of a surprise move, BlackBerry announced this morning that it has given up on its effort to sell itself to a large investor, and that it will be replacing Thorsten Heins with former Sybase chief John Chen as interim CEO…

The news came in the form of a press release, where BlackBerry announced that rather than bid for it, Fairfax Financial will lead a group of investors that will pour more than $1 billion into the battered Waterloo-based company. The money will come in the form of a debt sale.

From the press release:

“BlackBerry (Nasdaq: BBRY; TSX: BB), a world leader in the mobile communications market, today announced that it has entered into an agreement pursuant to which Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (“Fairfax”) and other institutional investors (collectively, the “Purchasers”) will invest in BlackBerry through a U.S. $1 billion private placement of convertible debentures.  Fairfax has agreed to acquire U.S.$250 million principal amount of the Debentures.  The transaction is expected to be completed within the next two weeks.”

BlackBerry says that today’s announcement marks the conclusion of the review of strategic alternatives it announced on August 12, 2013. It’s confident that an immediate cash injection is the best route for the company to take, and says it’s already begun making necessary changes.

Here’s more on the executive shuffle:

“Upon the closing of the transaction, John S. Chen will be appointed Executive Chair of BlackBerry’s Board of Directors and, in that role, will be responsible for the strategic direction, strategic relationships and organizational goals of BlackBerry.  Prem Watsa, Chairman and CEO of Fairfax, will be appointed Lead Director and Chair of the Compensation, Nomination and Governance Committee and Thorsten Heins and David Kerr intend to resign from the Board at closing.

In addition, Mr. Heins will step down as Chief Executive Officer at closing and Mr. Chen will serve as Interim Chief Executive Officer pending completion of a search for a new Chief Executive Officer.”

In addition to ceding the CEO post, Heins will step down from the board of directors, as will director David Kerr. Heins was hired as BlackBerry’s chief executive following the exit of its then co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie—well after the company began its downward spiral.

But Heins hasn’t done much, if anything, to slow the bleeding. BlackBerry announced back in September that it would be writing off nearly $1 billion in unsold smartphones and cutting 40% of its workforce. That’s over 4,500 layoffs, one of the largest ever for a Canadian company.

Putting all of that behind us, though, it will be interesting to see what John Chen and the new board members can do. I think it’s admirable that they’re going to try to rebuild (although I’m not sure if they really had a choice or not), instead of taking the easy way out like Palm.

Apple Is Once Again the World’s Most Valuable Company !

Apple keeps riding high, and it managed to regain its top spot as the world’s most valuable company. The Cupertino-based boys managed to out-Exxon the Exxon for the 1st place and we congratulate them (and their shareholders) for this major achievement. It’s much better to have a tech giant at the top than one of the companies that make Earth less livable place.

It’s interesting to note that back on August 10, 2011, Apple’s market cap was $337.17 billion, nowhere close to the new high of some $416 billion.

Apple’s market cap was around $414 billion during trading on Thursday, with the company’s stock up as high as $456.80 in the morning session. Exxon, meanwhile, saw shares slide more than 2 percent during the morning, sending its market cap to around $408 billion, following a disappointing earnings report.

The change made Apple, at least temporarily, once again the most valuable company in the world by market cap. It’s a title the company held throughout 2012, but ceded after its stock went tumbling late in the year and through the first half of 2013.

Over the last month, shares of AAPL have surged nearly $50. However, Apple is still off about $100 from the start of 2013, and remains well below its peak north of $700 reached last September.

Exxon overtook Apple’s market cap in late January of this year, amidst a continued selloff of AAPL stock. At the time, Apple was worth about $413 billion, not far from where it was as of Thursday afternoon.

After a few quarters with relatively flat growth, investors are hopeful that Apple can once again gain momentum this fall, particularly with the anticipated debuts of new iPhones and iPads. Among the products expected are a so-called “iPhone 5S,” a new low-cost iPhone, a thinner and lighter fifth-generation iPad, and a second-generation iPad mini.