EBay to Try Again in Japan by Using Help From Yahoo ...
TOKYO, Tuesday, Dec. 4 (Reuters) — EBay and Yahoo Japan said Tuesday that they would link up their auction sites to make cross-border bidding easier, in a deal that will give eBay, the American auction titan, another chance to woo Japanese consumers.
Shares in Yahoo Japan, owner of the nation’s biggest auction Web site, rose 3.9 percent to 56,400 yen on news of the deal.
EBay withdrew from Japan in 2002 after only two years, a rare failure for the company, after struggling to make inroads in a market where Yahoo Japan and Rakuten already operated well-established sites.
EBay and Yahoo Japan, which together have about 4 trillion yen ($36 billion) in annual successful bids, will first start a Japanese-language site on which Yahoo Japan users can bid for eBay items, spokesmen from the two firms said. The companies said they would call the site Sekaimon or “gateway to the world.”
Yahoo Japan, which estimates it has more than half of the online auction market in Japan, is about one-third owned by Yahoo and 40 percent by the Softbank Corporation. Softbank’s shares gained 2.1 percent, to 2,665 yen.
EBay has been seeking local partners to bolster its Asian operations in the face of mounting competition.
In China, it is working on a joint venture with the TOM Group’s TOM Online to compete against Alibaba.com. In Thailand, it plans to start a joint site with a domestic partner, Sanook.
Yahoo Japan said Shop Airlines, a unit of the online sales services firm NetPrice, would manage the site, payment services, customs clearance and delivery.
Shares in Yahoo Japan, owner of the nation’s biggest auction Web site, rose 3.9 percent to 56,400 yen on news of the deal.
EBay withdrew from Japan in 2002 after only two years, a rare failure for the company, after struggling to make inroads in a market where Yahoo Japan and Rakuten already operated well-established sites.
EBay and Yahoo Japan, which together have about 4 trillion yen ($36 billion) in annual successful bids, will first start a Japanese-language site on which Yahoo Japan users can bid for eBay items, spokesmen from the two firms said. The companies said they would call the site Sekaimon or “gateway to the world.”
Yahoo Japan, which estimates it has more than half of the online auction market in Japan, is about one-third owned by Yahoo and 40 percent by the Softbank Corporation. Softbank’s shares gained 2.1 percent, to 2,665 yen.
EBay has been seeking local partners to bolster its Asian operations in the face of mounting competition.
In China, it is working on a joint venture with the TOM Group’s TOM Online to compete against Alibaba.com. In Thailand, it plans to start a joint site with a domestic partner, Sanook.
Yahoo Japan said Shop Airlines, a unit of the online sales services firm NetPrice, would manage the site, payment services, customs clearance and delivery.
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