49 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections as of June 2011 and with 300 million mobile Internet users in 2012, a number that is expected to more than double by 2013. China Unicom and China Telecom range second and third. In October 2011, China Mobile started a new business model called Yi Book Store. Customers can order books via mobile phone and—as an innova- tive approach to services—pay cash on delivery. The China Mobile Portable Reading Platform holds a book collection of 300,000 titles (as of February 2012). The accumulated amount of customer visits since 2010 is said to be 300 million, reading 400 million pages per day (information provided by China Mobile, at BIBF 2012). Although the ambitions of China Mobile to shape the entire digital sector are huge, it has yet to be seen which sector, after the current transition period, will have the upper hand in de ning the digital future. At this point, three angles can be identi ed in this strategic competi- tion: the (mobile) network providers, led by China Mobile the manufacturers of hardware devices, notably Hanvon, but also most recently Huawei and the content providers, which include publishers as well as various online platforms. By summer 2011, it became clear that hardware manufacturers in particular were facing an increasingly tough economic environment. eReader manufacturer Hanvon reported signi cant losses, and both Founder and Aigo announced plans to stop production of eread- ers altogether. The new competitive situation was brought about by price wars for reading devices, espe- cially since the spring of 2011, as well as new platform competition from tablets—notably Apple’s iPad—and the major companies have reoriented their strategy by launching content-based ventures (http://bit.ly/ x1uUOC). Hanvon, founded in 1998, is thought to control an estimated two-thirds of the markets for E Ink–based reading devices, claiming over 1 million units sold. In its own ebook shop, Hanvon claimed in March 2011 to have 130,000 ebook titles available for download and to soon be expanding that number to 200,000 titles (http://bit.ly/ enue was derived from online user subscription pay- ments, adding up to ¥103 million (up from ¥37.4 million in 2008): 29 percent from wireless services (growing from ¥1.4 million in 2008 to ¥60 million in 2010) and 10.2% from online advertising (up from ¥3 million in 2008 to ¥21 million in 2010). Cloudary was the largest paid content provider for China Mobile’s central reading station in 2010. In October 2010, Cloudary/Shanda Literature launched its ebook platform Yun Zhong Shu Cheng, meaning “Library in the Clouds” (source: http://bit.ly/ wYK2jE). Key Players in the Digital Environment Over the last decade, China saw the rise of many major online platforms for all domains of Internet-based com- munication and ecommerce, including online search (www.Baidu.com) the trading platform Alibaba, which includes an online payment system (Alipay) and Yahoo! China (acquired in 2005) as well as—in the case of books—online retailers DangDang, Amazon, and Jingdong (www.360buy.com) (interview with Cheng Sanguo for this report). All these platforms have—each in their respective eld of action—in recent years engaged in aggressive price wars motivated by very price-sensitive consumers plus, they had to agree to the terms of the Chinese government’s strict policy of control over any content, both domestic and from abroad, on sensitive political and social issues, banning unwanted websites, and very e ectively discouraging domestic content providers of any kind from referring to topics considered to be con- troversial. (For a detailed account, see this study by Octavio Kulesz for the International Alliance of Independent Publishers titled “Digital Publishing in Developing Countries”). As for publishing, a premier role is being played by China Mobile, by far the country’s largest communica- tions provider and a Fortune Global 500 company (ranked number 87 in 2011), with 610 million subscribers
Previous Page Next Page

Extracted Text (may have errors)

49 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections as of June 2011 and with 300 million mobile Internet users in 2012, a number that is expected to more than double by 2013. China Unicom and China Telecom range second and third. In October 2011, China Mobile started a new business model called Yi Book Store. Customers can order books via mobile phone and—as an innova- tive approach to services—pay cash on delivery. The China Mobile Portable Reading Platform holds a book collection of 300,000 titles (as of February 2012). The accumulated amount of customer visits since 2010 is said to be 300 million, reading 400 million pages per day (information provided by China Mobile, at BIBF 2012). Although the ambitions of China Mobile to shape the entire digital sector are huge, it has yet to be seen which sector, after the current transition period, will have the upper hand in de ning the digital future. At this point, three angles can be identi ed in this strategic competi- tion: the (mobile) network providers, led by China Mobile the manufacturers of hardware devices, notably Hanvon, but also most recently Huawei and the content providers, which include publishers as well as various online platforms. By summer 2011, it became clear that hardware manufacturers in particular were facing an increasingly tough economic environment. eReader manufacturer Hanvon reported signi cant losses, and both Founder and Aigo announced plans to stop production of eread- ers altogether. The new competitive situation was brought about by price wars for reading devices, espe- cially since the spring of 2011, as well as new platform competition from tablets—notably Apple’s iPad—and the major companies have reoriented their strategy by launching content-based ventures (http://bit.ly/ x1uUOC). Hanvon, founded in 1998, is thought to control an estimated two-thirds of the markets for E Ink–based reading devices, claiming over 1 million units sold. In its own ebook shop, Hanvon claimed in March 2011 to have 130,000 ebook titles available for download and to soon be expanding that number to 200,000 titles (http://bit.ly/ enue was derived from online user subscription pay- ments, adding up to ¥103 million (up from ¥37.4 million in 2008): 29 percent from wireless services (growing from ¥1.4 million in 2008 to ¥60 million in 2010) and 10.2% from online advertising (up from ¥3 million in 2008 to ¥21 million in 2010). Cloudary was the largest paid content provider for China Mobile’s central reading station in 2010. In October 2010, Cloudary/Shanda Literature launched its ebook platform Yun Zhong Shu Cheng, meaning “Library in the Clouds” (source: http://bit.ly/ wYK2jE). Key Players in the Digital Environment Over the last decade, China saw the rise of many major online platforms for all domains of Internet-based com- munication and ecommerce, including online search (www.Baidu.com) the trading platform Alibaba, which includes an online payment system (Alipay) and Yahoo! China (acquired in 2005) as well as—in the case of books—online retailers DangDang, Amazon, and Jingdong (www.360buy.com) (interview with Cheng Sanguo for this report). All these platforms have—each in their respective eld of action—in recent years engaged in aggressive price wars motivated by very price-sensitive consumers plus, they had to agree to the terms of the Chinese government’s strict policy of control over any content, both domestic and from abroad, on sensitive political and social issues, banning unwanted websites, and very e ectively discouraging domestic content providers of any kind from referring to topics considered to be con- troversial. (For a detailed account, see this study by Octavio Kulesz for the International Alliance of Independent Publishers titled “Digital Publishing in Developing Countries”). As for publishing, a premier role is being played by China Mobile, by far the country’s largest communica- tions provider and a Fortune Global 500 company (ranked number 87 in 2011), with 610 million subscribers

Help

loading