Electronics

Rakuten, Japan's top internet retailer, has bought its British counterpart Play.com for about £25 million (just short of €30 million). Play.com is one of the biggest British e-commerce sites, specialised in the sales of DVDs, CDs and books. The webshop hopes the takeover can help them expand into such areas as clothes and accessories.

Expanding in Europe

Play.com is not the first European acquisition made by Rakuten: the group has already taken over sites like PriceMinister from France and Tradoria from Germany and is also active in Europe through Buy.com. The international expansion is necessary for the Japanese retailer as it faces threats like population decrease and lower consumer spendings in its home market. The group tries to achieve that expansion not only through acquisitions, but also through joint ventures like the one with China's main search engine Baidu.

Rakuten is currently active in over ten countries and employs more than 7000 people. Its newest acquisition Play.com is based on Jersey, technically not a member of the UK and not subject to British VAT rules.
 

E-retail giant Amazon.com announced excellent quarterly results yesterday, confirming its global dominance in the internet retail market. While profits went down 8% compared to last year, sales went up a staggering 51% tot $9.91 billion (almost €7 billion). 

Huge sales growth leads to investment, not profit

“Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we’ve seen in over a decade,” said Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, in a statement.

Amazon paid a high price for its expansions though, as operational costs soared with 63% - causing net profits to drop to 191 million dollar (133 million euro). More employees, acquisitions of other companies and logistic and technological renovations cut a huge part of Amazon's income. 

Amazon's new tablet

Amazon still had no sales figures for the Kindle, its successful e-reader, but announced that the “Worldwide Electronics and Other General Merchandise” (including the Kindle) saw its quarterly sales increase by 69% 

The only disappointed noises came from tech followers, who had expected that Amazon would introduce its own tablet computer, competing with rival Apple's iPad. The e-retail giants however made no such move.

German electronics distributors Media Markt and Saturn have finally decided to enter the online market. Their goal is not modest: becoming market leaders. 

Saturn starts web shop in 2011, Media Markt in 2012 

Saturn will open its German web shop right before holiday season, while its sister company Media Markt will join them in the first quarter of 2012 – according to Metro chairman Eckhard Cordes in the Germain Welt am Sonntag. 

During this year, preparations will include takeovers of online electronics retailers, as to acquire the necessary know-how. Just like the recently bought web shop Redcoon, those retailers will continue to function as separate entities, so Metro can make their grasp on the online market as complete as possible – with the minimum goal being 30%. 

Reassuring the franchisees

To reassure the franchisees of the physical stores (which had been a major issue in the past), they will receive a commission on the web shop turnover. Moreover, prices in web shop and physical stores will be the same, and franchisees will only have to deal with the web shop if the ordered products are too big or too complicated to be simply delivered by a courier service.

So far, there are no concrete plans to start with a Belgian web shop. The Dutch version is already online: it was the test project that started two years ago.

Apple's vice-president for retail Ron Johnson will leave the company in August. He will succeed Mike Ullman, who has been chairman of American department store chain JC Penney since 2004.

Genius Bar

Ron Johnson was the inventor of Apple's “Genius Bar”, where customers can get tech support for free. He has been responsible for Apple's Stores since the first one opened in 2001 – overseeing over 320 later store openings in 11 different countries. Since then, they have attracted over a billion people.

52 year old Johnson will face a serious challenge at 1100 store chain JC Penney, where sales have been dropping for the last three years as consumers left the chain for cheaper discounters like Target – the chain where Johnson, in a strange twist of fate, worked for 15 years before moving to Apple.

JC Penney claims Johnson will buy Penney shares for 50 million dollars to show “his faith in the long term potential of the group”. The news overjoyed investors and the share prise soared to +17%.
 
 

Chinese computer producer Lenovo has launched a takeover bid on German competitors Medion, known best for producing Aldi's electronics.

The Chinese company will buy 36.6% of shares from Gerd Brachman, who is Medion's majority shareholder with 56%. Given its price of 13 euro per share, Lenovo will pay Brachman 231 million euro, esteeming Medion's worth to be near 630 million euro. The takeover is conditional and will only take place if Lenovo succeeds in getting another 14% of shares elsewhere.

Lenovo is the world's number 4 computer producer (behind HP, Acer and Dell) with a market share of 9.7%. Medion will add only 0.3% to that, but will be Lenovo's largest takeover since buying IBM's computer department in 2004.