TOKYO-Rakuten, the largest virtual marketplace operator in Japan, on Tuesday opened its renewed mobile-phone site, which carries a total of 5,000 virtual stores and 1.3 million items available for purchase. Rakuten initially opened its mobile site in September 2000 with 5,000 items.
To meet strong demand for the mobile site, it expanded the number of stores from the previous 500 to 5,000 stores and the number of items from 20,000 to 1.3 million items. Rakuten posted 200 million yen (US$1.7 million) in sales from its mobile site last month.
