Holiday cell phone shopping up threefold: eBay
According to the figures release from eBay, in this holiday season, more and more shoppers have used their cell phones to make purchases than in past years.
The largest online marketplace operator announced on Monday that people used cell phones to buy 1.5 million products in the past several weeks of the ongoing holiday season. This figure is three times the figures obtained last year.
eBay also said that the holiday mobile purchases included a 1966 Chevrolet Corvette that was sold for USD 75,000 and a 23-foot boat that sold for USD 19,108. Combining both the mobile and the traditional online purchases, eBay users bought more than 500,000 Zhu Zhu Pets robotic hamsters.
eBay said that about 6 million people have eBay’s applications on iPhones and people use their mobile application to visit its site more than 2 million times each day.
eBay fined in France for selling upscale perfumes
The top online auction site eBay Inc. was fined USD $2.5 million by a Paris court on Monday for its failure to stop the sale of the famous perfume brands like Christian Dior, Guerlain, Givenchy and Kenzo. All of these products are owned by the renowned luxury group LVMH.
This decision was made after a ruling against eBay last year stating that the largest online auction company wasn’t respecting the system of selective distribution championed by brand owners such as LVMH and Richemont SA, the Swiss maker of Cartier watches.
The brand owners have been arguing that their luxury goods are valuable and exclusive, available for certain selected outlets “and not in an online free-for-all.”
eBay, on the other hand, has been calling for a change in European rules that allow luxury manufacturers to choose who can sell their branded goods online. This they say “constitutes an important step in the fight against unlawful practices.”
Earlier too, eBay has run into legal trouble with luxury goods and other cosmetics manufacturers over the sale of bogus products on the site. Last year, a French court ordered eBay to pay more than USD 61 million to LVMH over counterfeit sales.
EBay completes sale of Skype for USD 2 billion
As on Friday, EBay has successfully completed its sale of Skype for about USD 2 billion to an investor group that included the founders of the Internet phone service.
Last week, one of the largest and the most popular online auction site, EBay settled a legal scuffle with co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis which allowed the deal to move forward. The settlement gave Skype the ownership of critical software that had been licensed from the company they founded — Joltid Ltd.
On Thursday, EBay said that the online retailer sold about 70 per cent stake in the company for about USD 1.9 billion plus USD 125 million that it will receive later.
The company shall retain the remainder 30 per cent of the stake.
EBay to Sell Majority Stake in Skype
Internet commerce portal eBay announced Tuesday that it planned to sell a majority stake in Skype to a group of private investors led by equity firm Silver Lake Partners.
Under the terms of the deal, buyers will acquire 65 percent stake in Skype calling service in exchange of $1.9 billion in cash which however includes a loan of $125 million from eBay. The latter will continue to hold 35 percent equity investment in Skype which has been estimated to be worth $2.75 billion under the conditions of the present deal.
Skype is an internet calling service which has established its presence in the highly competitive market of web-based calling services. According to industry estimates Skype is predicted to garner more than $600 million in revenue in the current year.
The group of buyers for Skype is led by Silicon Valley-based private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. Other significant names in the group are Andreessen Horowitz, a recent venture capital firm floated by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Index Ventures, another venture capital firm based in London which was of the first investors in Skype.
EBay acquired Skype for $2.1 billion in 2005 in a deal that was rumored to have paid much more than the internet calling service was then worth.
EBay to Ban Sale of Ivory Items
Popular online auction portal eBay has decided to ban the sale of ivory products to help save the African and Asian elephants from being killed for their tusks which is the source of the inordinately expensive material.
The ban will go into effect in December this year and will be enforced from January 2009, announced an eBay official on Tuesday. While the company will allow sale of products with small amounts of ivory like pianos, they must have been manufactured before the year 1900. However products containing large amounts of ivory will not be allowed for sale regardless of the year of their making. Among the products expected to be banned by this policy are chess sets, ivory broaches as well as other jewellery items made of ivory.
eBay decided to take the step to ban all ivory products since it had become impossible for the company to ensure that the product for sale was in compliance with the complex regulations governing the sale of ivory products, wrote Richard Brewer-Hay in the company blog, eBay Ink.
Last year eBay had imposed a ban on cross-border sales of ivory products but sales had continued unhindered. The decision to ban all ivory products from December onwards was welcomed by the Humane Society International as well as the Humane Society of the United States which had brought into eBay’s notice as early as 2002 the sale of thousands of ivory products being conducted on its site.
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