Mr. Son, “The World of Winners” Background of Yahoo Line Management Integration

The president behind the grandson “World of Winners” Yahoo LINE management integration on November 18 at 18:24

President Masayoshi Son of the Softbank Group said, “The IT industry is the world of all winners” and stressed that it is important to take the top of the industry. It has an impact on strategy.

In September, when Yahoo decided to acquire ZOZO, which operates the largest fashion mail order site in Japan, investing ¥ 400 billion, President Son played a role in mediating both parties.

In this business integration, LINE will become a SoftBank group, and together with Yahoo will create a group that handles a wide range of Internet services such as search, SNS, and smart phone settlement.

As a grandson president, Softbank Group invested from the very beginning, and it seems that it wants to be like China's Alibaba Group, which has grown into a huge IT company through online shopping and smartphone payments, etc. It will be noticed whether you can apply such power.

The aim of Yahoo LINE

Yahoo and LINE want to bring each other's strengths with the opportunity of management integration, and increase their presence in the online industry in Japan and overseas.

Yahoo has 50 million users who handle search and news distribution, but in the field of online shopping, it lags behind competitors such as Amazon and Rakuten.

According to the survey company “Nielsen,” as of May, the Amazon has 46.72 million online users, 45.73 million Rakuten users, and 27.42 million Yahoo users.

Yahoo has just acquired ZOZO, which operates a fashion mail order site with the goal of becoming the domestic top in online mail order, and in the future wants to further expand its business by utilizing the LINE customer base centered on the younger generation It is an idea.

In addition, in the smartphone payment field, where businesses are in a disorganized state, the share of both companies will increase rapidly.

According to research company "MMD Laboratory", SoftBank Group's "PayPay" has the highest usage rate of QR code payment at 44.2%. Next, “Rakuten Pay” was 17.1%, “LINEPay” was 13.6%, NTT Docomo “d payment” was 13.6%, and so on.

If “PayPay” and “LINEPay” are simply combined, the calculation will exceed 50%, and it is expected that both users will be able to send money without a fee in the future.

LINE also has a huge customer base of 82 million free applications, while upfront investment in areas such as smartphone payments has sounded, and the financial results from January to September have a final deficit of 33.9 billion yen. It is.

For this reason, LINE seems to have decided that it will be necessary for future growth to join the SoftBank Group through integration with Yahoo and utilize its financial capabilities and AI-related technologies.

Defending and attacking against GAFA

In addition to becoming the top Internet service in Japan, this integration has the aim of aggressively expanding overseas, but overseas, giant IT companies called “platformers” have an overwhelming presence. It is unknown how far Yahoo and LINE can compete overseas while protecting the domestic market.

In the United States, Amazon has over 25 trillion yen in Japanese yen in annual sales, Google's holding company, the alphabet is about 15 trillion yen, etc., boasting orders of magnitude compared to Japanese IT-related companies.

These companies, which are called “GAFA” after the initials of four companies, including Apple and Facebook, are diversifying services such as cashless payment and video distribution in addition to online shopping and search services. In addition, we are bringing users into our own “economic zone” where all services can be completed by one company.

We are also actively investing in research and development in areas such as AI, which is the key to next-generation technology.

In China, a major IT company called “BAT” has been growing rapidly from the initials of “Baidu”, “Alibaba”, and “Tencent”. The annual sales of the Alibaba Group are ¥ 5.8 trillion and Tencent is ¥ 4 trillion. This is 800 billion yen, much higher than Japanese companies.

On the other hand, LINE has not only 82 million users in the country, but 45 million in Thailand, 21 million in Taiwan, 16 million in Indonesia, and the share in Thailand and Taiwan is It means that it is 2nd in the top, Indonesia.

Yahoo has a license agreement with an American company, so in principle, logos and brands can only be used in Japan.

After the integration, LINE will be able to provide Yahoo's Internet services to customers in Asia, and we want to use it as a foothold to follow the back of huge IT companies overseas.

According to the statement announced on the 18th, both companies said, “Overseas companies mainly in the United States and China are overwhelmingly dominant in the Internet industry.” Aiming to become the world's leading AI tech company. "

Entering the LINE SB group

The business integration between Yahoo and LINE will be promoted in stages, and LINE will eventually join the SoftBank group.

LINE is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In this integration, SOFTBANK and South Korean neighbors contributed 170 billion yen each, for a total of 340 billion yen, making a TOB = public purchase of LINE shares. LINE listing will be abolished.

Later, LINE will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Z Holdings, a holding company, together with Yahoo !.

The largest shareholder of Z Holdings is a company established by Softbank and Neighbors 50% each, and this company will be a consolidated subsidiary of SoftBank.