Japanese companies jump on mobile e-book bandwagon

[grimo1re]

In Japan, more and more companies are entering the market for e-books on mobile phones. The overall market in Japan for e-books grew 1.7-fold to about JPY 30 billion in fiscal 2007, the Nikkei (subscription required) reports citing figures from Impress R&D. Of that total, mobile content accounted for more than 70 percent doubling to JPY 22 billion. The introduction of mobile plans with cheap fixed fees for data have helped fuel the market, the paper claims. Young consumers are driving demand with several companies offering youth-oriented content such as manga.

Examples include games developer Koei which is set to publish a collection of novels with anime illustrations aimed at middle and high schools students. The company will publish 20 e-books on its mobile internet site in September and plans to add 10 manga e-books by the end of this year. Kadokawa Mobile plans to expand its range of titles for mobile phones to around 2,100 from the current 1,300. The new titles will include illustrated novels and manga. Publisher Shogakukan is also increasing the number of mobile e-books it makes available before the print copies are released. Finally, mobile website operator CA Mobile has spun off its e-book division in April and will launch a new site and service.

Related: Next hot cell phone trend: picture books?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by grimo1re

The introduction of mobile plans with cheap fixed fees for data have helped fuel the market, the paper claims.

That sounds cool. I wonder how American and European carriers' plans compare with that (in terms of cheap, and fixed)?

I also wonder about the costs of the books, manga, etc, that they're downloading.

[grimo1re]

Here in the Netherlands are good deals to be had for mobile data plans. Dunno about US though..

[Ea]

In Denmark, mobile, fixed-price data plans - at a reasonable price IMO - have become common in the last year, and I think the market is starting to take off.