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Comic Book Heroes Coming Soon to Your Cell Phone

Posted on: Saturday, 21 June 2008, 00:05 CDT

Comic book superheroes like Superman and Spiderman may soon be appearing on your mobile phone.

Businessmen reading comic books are a common sight in Japan, but as publishers have increasingly begun to digitize their comics, readers will soon be eyeing their phones instead. 

The launch of Apple Inc’s APPL.O iPhone on July 11 could increase the growth of the mobile comic book market. The APPL.O’s touch-screen will make it easier and more attractive to read digital comics.

Mobile carriers are providing better digital content and data transmission services to increase profits in one of the most mobile savvy cultures in the world.

Today nearly 85 percent of Japan’s population uses mobile phones.

Internet surfing, e-mailing, and music-downloads are already popular mobile services in Japan, and experts predict comics will be the next wave of popular digital content with the number of titles currently soaring.

According to research firm Impress R&D, comics caused the size of the mobile publication market to double in the last year to 22 billion yen or $204 million. The increase makes the mobile publication market nearly three times larger than the e-publication market for personal computers.

"Until now, users had been extensively using mobile phones for emails. Now that's shifting to games and comics ... this is the area where it's going to be very interesting," said Shinko Securities analyst Tomohiko Okugawa.

Content providers such as MTI Ltd, DeNA, and Dwango have been benefiting as top mobile phone carriers – NTT, DoCoMo Inc, KDDI Corp, and Softbank Corp – have been unveiling handsets and services with enhanced features like animated e-mails and downloads.

The general manager of KDDI’s content and media division Toshitake Amamiya said, “We cannot be ahead of competition just by prices, features and sounds like we used to, and now we have to improve contents and user-friendliness to position ourselves apart from the rivals.”

Amamiya also said it is crucial that both content continues to grow and adults are pushed to use the mobile phone as a life tool.

Analyst Hiroshi Yamashina said the bigger displays of new mobile phones would continue to help make mobile comics more popular.

Yamashina also believes that the launch of Apple Inc's iPhone will also increase the popularity of mobile comics as it can resurrect the feeling of turning a page on its touch sensitive screen.

Source: redOrbit staff and wire reports

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