Japan’s biggest mobile operator NTT DoCoMo and major printing company Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) announced they would jointly start an e-book delivery service intended for feature phones, smartphones and tablet terminals this fall. The two companies will arrange the entire process of the e-book delivery service including content collecting, online book store management and overseas distribution.
More than 100,000 books and newspapers will be available at the service release. It is expected to be operating in cooperation with DNP’s other book sales channels such as several large-scale real bookstore chains and online bookstore BK1[J] owned by the printing company. Publishing giants like Kodansha and Shogakkan, NEC, LG Electronics Japan, Korea’s Samsung Electronics have been supporting the new service’s launch.
Meanwhile, as movements of NTT DoCoMo’s competitors in business, KDDI is preparing for a similar service in association with Toppan Printing, Sony and the Asahi Shimbun(see this for more details). Softbank Mobile started an online magazine delivery service called Viewn(see this Akky’s story for more details) for the iPad and the iPhone users.
Masaru IKEDA