Translated News: Boom in Manga on Cell Phone; the Fixed Free System

[Floating_Sakura]

Boom in Manga by Cellular Phone. Fixed Fee System and Female Readers Push the Boom.


People who read manga by cellular phone increase in number. Cellular phone generation corresponds to manga readers, and this business has grown to the most vital market of all electric book services. Major publishing companies begin to focus on enrichment of their contents.

Dec. 22, Shueisha began to provide 17 titles of Shonen Jump, such as “Dragon Ball” at its cellular phone site, “Shueisha Manga Capsule”. The most unique thing is that they provide their works in color, even though they were in grey tones when they were published. Now, 20% of the works are colored. “Coloring is essential to export,” says Sekiya Hiroshi. He is working for the Contents Planning Section of Rights Enterprises Division and he keeps his eyes on the oversea market.

Also, Kodansha began to provide popular titles of “Morning” in October, and they will start providing “Afternoon”. In order to read manga by a small display of a cellular phone, a picture-story show style that every frame is separated is poplar. However, Kodansha persists in scrolling style that enables the reader to scroll one page from the top to the bottom, the right to the left. Yoshizawa Shinichi, the vice director of Moura section of Digital Editorial Office, says, “By this system, we can make 20 pages a day while it used to take one week”.

Shogakkan is also planning to digitalize 200 thousands works.

According to Impress R&D, a publisher of information technology books, the size of the digital comic market for cellular phone was 2.3 billion yen last year, and it will grow this year.

The main factor of this popularity is establishment of the "fixed fee system" for packet communication in cellular phones. If the customer contracts fixed fee system, he has to pay only the membership fee (300 yen per month) without worrying about the communication fee.

The main supports of this boom are female readers. Kobayashi Katsunori, a staff of Mobile Business Group of NTT Solmare that manages "Comic i”, the biggest cellular phone manga site in Japan, says, “First we assumed that the readers were men, but actually, more than 60% of the customers are women. Probably because many of them read manga when they send e-mail to their friends before going to bed.” This is easier to manga that they hesitate to buy at actual store, such as Boy’s Love, and would not have to worry about what other people think.

Kodansha also created a new business model that changes media from cellular phone to personal computer or papers depending on its popularity. “One of advantages of Manga is it can be read not only cellular phone but personal computer and video game consoles,” says Shogakkan. Amid of depression of publishing business, the view around manga business is changing.

Translated by: Masahiko
Translated from: http://www.sankei.co.jp/culture/ente...t070103000.htm