Mobile Comics Expect To Follow Email And Music As Next Big Thing In Japan
Who knew? First came emailing, then came music downloads and internet surfing on the mobile device. Now comes comics. Reuters reports today that in Japan, analysts expect the next big thing on the small screen to be superheroes, like Superman and Spiderman. In the last year, revenues in the “mobile publication market” doubled to 22 billion yen ($204 million) because of this phenomenon. At that size, it makes it almost three times larger than the e-publication market for PCs, according to Internet and media research firm Impress R&D. “Until now, users had been extensively using mobile phones for emails,” said Shinko Securities analyst Tomohiko Okugawa. “Now that’s shifting to games and comics…this are is going to be very interesting.” Analysts surmise the popularity of comics have come as phones in Japan have gotten bigger screens and higher-quality resolution to make them more enjoyable to read.
Posted In: Entertainment, Gaming, Music, Media & Publishing, Research & Metrics, Countries, Asia
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Comments (3)
Jun 23, 2008 6:50 AM
Comics on mobile aren’t just proving popular in Japan: translations of strips first published on ROK Comics (http://www.rokcomics.com) for China have proven very popular over the past two months.
What we’re also finding is that mobile comics are proving popular even in a countries where there is no traditional print-based or web comic industry, and mobile reaches far more people than even web comic creators reach via PC delivery.
Webcomics creators I’ve talked to argue a hardcore fan set of a couple of thousand readers is enough to turn a profit online (largely through sales of strip-related merchandise such as collections, t-shirts etc.) so the potential revenues are strong.
Delivering comics on mobile in the West is achievable - we’ve been doing that for over a year - but creators and publishers do need to take on board the creative challenges imposed by small screen delivery.
Jun 23, 2008 4:05 PM
Webcomics is certainly the way ahead. What with Asian economies doing good in recent times and Inida and China emerging as technology centers of the world.
Jul 9, 2008 6:29 AM
Very cool idea being able to read comics through a mobile platform. The creative challenges mentioned in John’s posting are reduced by using proprietary compression techniques, as in our mobile website builder.
http://www.gotamobi.com