Retail Hulk Buys Kobo Ebook Firm

Japan's greatest internet tradesman is receiving over the ebook definite Kobo.

Rakuten already sells other digital reader in Japan: the Raboo, that is done by Panasonic.

The $315m (198m) merger is written to help it turn a of the greatest players in the ebook industry.

The company moreover hopes to use Kobo and its renouned book-themed amicable network to spread its other services. Rakuten operates travel, banking, e-commerce, sports and media divisions.

"We feel that an ebook reader will eventually not be usually about selling books," Rakuten senior manager Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet told the BBC.

"It's about potentially selling other digital products and it's moreover about being in consumers' homes with a hardware device."

Kobo's arriving Vox reader is a seven-inch colour Android tablet. That offers its new owners an chance to sell other forms of media, surroundings it up as a opponent to Amazon's Kindle Fire.

It can moreover run Kobo's book-based amicable network, that may be used to erect brand loyalty.

"Definitely the ebook marketplace is not just for ebooks, it probably means going towards other stuff" mentioned Mr Kosciusko-Morizet.

"We regard the cost fighting is going to be truly burly and so it's even more critical to be burly in that battle."

Rakuten has moreover paid for 3 European online retailers over the past two years: The British store Play.com, France's Price Minister and Germany's Tradoria.

That potentially puts it in to strife with two high lane bondage that sell Kobo's gadgets - the UK's WH Smith and France's Fnac.

However, Rakuten believes its attribute with these companies will not change.

"We feel that being usually online creates it tough to be a large player in the market, and moreover it is probably a marketplace where you must be a of the tip 3 or two players," mentioned Mr Kosciusko-Morizet.

In lapse for in-store sales of its devices, Rakuten will go on to share locally-generated revenues from its online book sales.

"The sale of Kobo has no repercussions on the partnership. The increased investment and universal scale will usually upgrade the on the whole offering," mentioned a mouthpiece for WH Smith.