Ebooks on Mobile Phones?

[BillSmithBooks]

Thank you for the very insightful posts on this.

I'm curious about this not for myself but just from a marketing perspective: People have their cell phones with them at all times and in some parts of world, while internet access is iffy (at best), cell phones are ubiquitous.

It just seems like a potentially huge avenue for reaching readers--hence my interest in "non-smart" phones. Most phones in use are of the non-smart type although quite a few can read web pages, etc.

I was just trying to get a feel for how many devices could read ebooks as plain text or html files, if the phones can store the books in their memory, etc. I've done some research but there seems to be a bewildering number of approaches to these devices.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

As many non-smartphones have enough memory to hold a fileful of photos (the ones with cameras and color screens, obviously), I would guess that holding a few e-books would be child's play for most of them. It's always the display that's the catch.

Phones that can view web pages can access books on web servers easily enough... I believe that's how most Japanese cellphone readers do it, though that may primarily be for Manga. I'd guess there may also be e-book reading apps available to them, since most cellphones do not allow large single documents to be opened or read in their built-in note apps.

I too wouldn't mind hearing more on this, if anyone else has actual use details.

[leomavin]

Hi I was wondering if anyone knows of any mobile news reading app that syncs news feeds for offline reading. Just like calibre does on desktop. Actually it might be useful if we had a calibre-like app on Android that has a list of feeds already built in and can sync with password protected sites like FT.com

[victorgoh]

i wouldn't be surprised if many people don't read on their cellphones mainly because they have no idea they could, or where / how to get books. - zelda_pinwheel

I agree with zelda_pinwheel's observation, I also think that most people wouldn't know how to get ebooks onto their non-smartphone phone. Downloading ebooks onto the phone would require a data plan and not everyone has that. Also, not everyone knows how to transfer an ebook from their PC to their phone.

I used to enjoy reading java midlet ebooks on my Sony Ericsson P1i (Now, I have an Android HTC Legend with Aldiko as my ebook reader). You can easily get ebooks in midlet format from http://www.booksinmyphone.com and http://www.mobilebooklet.com (which I created). But after a year of running the mobile booklet site, I find that ebooks on non-smartphones has a very niche audience.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I'd guess that younger and more tech-savvy users know how to get apps and books onto their phone. Whether or not they want to... that's the thing. Using data transfer cables, installing transfer apps on your computer, etc, are things most people don't want to be bothered with unless they have a good incentive to do so. I'd bet a lot of people think that's more trouble than it's worth.

Of course, once it's set up and used a few times, most people get used to the process, and even consider it easy. So it's largely a break-through issue.

[Elvira]

i wanted to download kindle for blackberry, but it wasn't available for my mode ...grrr..

it would be much smaller, but I think for once-in-a-while use it would be sufficient.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Elvira

i wanted to download kindle for blackberry, but it wasn't available for my mode ...grrr..

it would be much smaller, but I think for once-in-a-while use it would be sufficient.

I'd like to see it for my WinMo HTC phone, too... but I'm not holding my breath...