55 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections In 2011, 86.7 percent of the world population had a mobile cellular subscription 17 percent, or 1.2 billion people, owned a mobile broadband subscription, which is slightly more than the 16.6 percent with a xed land line (International Telecommunication Union, November 2011, quoted here). For books and reading, several factors coincide: Q In a significantly growing number of “emerging economies”—which goes a long way beyond the usually quoted Brazil, Russia, India, China, and includes countries such as South Africa, Argentina, Mexico, the Gulf countries, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and many others—a significant part of the population can afford and is in fact using mobile networks of digital content, have growing educa- tional aspirations as well as an interest in both local and global entertainment, and have access to all this via the Internet and their mobile devices. Q A relatively small number of leading publishing companies, specializing in trade and education— groups such as Pearson (including the Penguin brand), Hachette, Random House, HarperCollins (backed up by their parent NewsCorp), plus a few learning companies (Oxford, Cambridge, Wiley, Cengage) and publishers of science and professional information (Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier)—have woven truly global networks over the past few years, with local offices (not just for sales) exploring those (notably digitally connected) routes opened by the finance industry in the 1980s, global cities in the 1990s, and global tourism in the 2000s. Q Apple’s iPod and iTunes have shown consumers around the globe how easily content can flow, while text messages, Facebook, and Twitter have con- nected consumers as individuals, not just as target groups. Small markets nd themselves in a challenging situation as well. Many have rooted their cultural and national identity in a cultural singularity, which is usually anchored in literature and books. Yet those same local elites who represent such a strong local identity, and who are strong readers, also tend to be among the rst to embrace reading in English, as they are uent in foreign languages and open to other cultures and travel widely. Slovenia, Sweden, and Denmark are examples of such, analysed in the by-country section of this report. New Market Entrants and New Paradigms 2011 was the year of ebooks reaching the non-English- language markets 2012 is the year when globalization is broadly felt as a de ning force in the book business. eBooks are more of a conduit than a driver in their own right for this shift, but are one element that has made globalization visible and tangible. For some time, the book business, as an industry of a certain scale, was largely occupied by actors from a few home markets in North America, Europe, and Asia— notably Japan and Korea as well as China and India. In most other parts of the world, disregarding the cultural aspirations of large populations, strict limits existed from the simple lack of a professional infrastructure to make all the newest books available, to disseminate basic information about new titles, and to ship a title across much of the Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa (perhaps with the exception of South Africa), and even large parts of Latin America. When a simple and a ordable hookup to the Internet turns billions of phones, laptops, and now tablet com- puters into a possible—and often enough even decent—reading and book retrieval device, something fundamental is about to happen. In a very similar pat- tern, communication was already forever changed a decade and a half ago by the advent of mobile phones, as they bypassed the ailing infrastructure of land lines in so many parts of this globe.
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55 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections In 2011, 86.7 percent of the world population had a mobile cellular subscription 17 percent, or 1.2 billion people, owned a mobile broadband subscription, which is slightly more than the 16.6 percent with a xed land line (International Telecommunication Union, November 2011, quoted here). For books and reading, several factors coincide: Q In a significantly growing number of “emerging economies”—which goes a long way beyond the usually quoted Brazil, Russia, India, China, and includes countries such as South Africa, Argentina, Mexico, the Gulf countries, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and many others—a significant part of the population can afford and is in fact using mobile networks of digital content, have growing educa- tional aspirations as well as an interest in both local and global entertainment, and have access to all this via the Internet and their mobile devices. Q A relatively small number of leading publishing companies, specializing in trade and education— groups such as Pearson (including the Penguin brand), Hachette, Random House, HarperCollins (backed up by their parent NewsCorp), plus a few learning companies (Oxford, Cambridge, Wiley, Cengage) and publishers of science and professional information (Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier)—have woven truly global networks over the past few years, with local offices (not just for sales) exploring those (notably digitally connected) routes opened by the finance industry in the 1980s, global cities in the 1990s, and global tourism in the 2000s. Q Apple’s iPod and iTunes have shown consumers around the globe how easily content can flow, while text messages, Facebook, and Twitter have con- nected consumers as individuals, not just as target groups. Small markets nd themselves in a challenging situation as well. Many have rooted their cultural and national identity in a cultural singularity, which is usually anchored in literature and books. Yet those same local elites who represent such a strong local identity, and who are strong readers, also tend to be among the rst to embrace reading in English, as they are uent in foreign languages and open to other cultures and travel widely. Slovenia, Sweden, and Denmark are examples of such, analysed in the by-country section of this report. New Market Entrants and New Paradigms 2011 was the year of ebooks reaching the non-English- language markets 2012 is the year when globalization is broadly felt as a de ning force in the book business. eBooks are more of a conduit than a driver in their own right for this shift, but are one element that has made globalization visible and tangible. For some time, the book business, as an industry of a certain scale, was largely occupied by actors from a few home markets in North America, Europe, and Asia— notably Japan and Korea as well as China and India. In most other parts of the world, disregarding the cultural aspirations of large populations, strict limits existed from the simple lack of a professional infrastructure to make all the newest books available, to disseminate basic information about new titles, and to ship a title across much of the Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa (perhaps with the exception of South Africa), and even large parts of Latin America. When a simple and a ordable hookup to the Internet turns billions of phones, laptops, and now tablet com- puters into a possible—and often enough even decent—reading and book retrieval device, something fundamental is about to happen. In a very similar pat- tern, communication was already forever changed a decade and a half ago by the advent of mobile phones, as they bypassed the ailing infrastructure of land lines in so many parts of this globe.

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