June 17, 2010
Not So Black and White
Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2010 Lastly for this month, you know that iPad thing everyone’s talking about? Well, it seems even the big boys of Japanese publishing have been paying sufficient attention to pull their heads out of the sand and take action before they’re swamped in a tide of e-ink. The latest […]
By Metropolis
Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2010
Lastly for this month, you know that iPad thing everyone’s talking about? Well, it seems even the big boys of Japanese publishing have been paying sufficient attention to pull their heads out of the sand and take action before they’re swamped in a tide of e-ink.
The latest ventures see Yahoo Japan pimping free manga for the device, a major publisher of women’s magazines shunting 50 titles onto it, and some heavy hitters pulling in a different direction entirely.
The Asahi Shimbun, KDDI, Toppan and Sony are all working on getting newspapers, magazines and books onto a common platform in dedicated devices and cellphones. To that end, they’ve formed a new company that should fuel the e-reader war for at least another, ooh, 12 months until the iPad takes over. And what’s happened to the Kindle in all this?
