by Serkan Toto
Yahoo’s stake in Yahoo Japan
is often cited as one of its most valuable assets, and indeed Yahoo is considering selling it as a quick fix to appease angry shareholders in the U.S. While Yahoo seems to be treading water in the US, Yahoo Japan is sitting on top of the Japanese web industry. In fact, Yahoo Japan’s market cap at the Tokyo stock exchange is hovering at around $22 billion, compared to Yahoo’s current $27 billion. Fiscal 2007 marked the 11th consecutive year of profitability and record revenues: Yahoo Japan’s sales grew 23.3% to $2.4 billion (Yahoo in the US: $7 billion) on a year-to-year basis, with a net income of $570 million (US: $660 million).
With 46 million monthly unique visitors, according to comScore, Yahoo Japan reaches 82 percent of all Internet users in the country. That compares to 26 million monthly uniques (or a 46 percent reach) for Google in Japan. (In the U.S., the two are neck and neck, with Yahoo drawing 138 million monthly uniques, and Google 133 million). Alexa also has been ranking Yahoo Japan at No. 1 for years now.
It’s no exaggeration to say that for millions of light users in Japan, the Yahoo portal site is almost synonymous with the web itself. Here are three major reasons (and possible hints for other web companies wanting to expand internationally) for this dominance...
