When an industry starts to change, it’s like a large tree being felled. It starts off imperceptibly, but rapidly accelerates until it comes crashing down. As an example, the world’s first camera phone was only launched in Japan in November 2000. And now Nokia is the leading digital camera maker in the world.
One of the latest sectors experiencing the dizziness of the TIMBER! effect seems to be Manga comics in Japan, according to Japan Times. Putting Manga on mobiles only started in 2003, spurred by 3G availability, and already is showing signs of killing its paper based parent.
Paper-based publishing is actually experiencing a double whammy onslaught from mobiles. Even before Manga was available on phones, sales had started to decline in line with the growth of mobiles. This is attributed to young people spending their disposable income on their phones, communication and content. But now the phone itself has become a publishing channel, this effect is accelerating.
Indeed, many famous Manga creators are apparently considering bypassing the old publishers and going straight to market via Ketai (mobile phone).
Of course, the mobile is really well suited to reading comic strips on the mobile - unlike say, a text-based book. With displays of either page scroll (navigation by scrolling up and down the page) or even better, picture card (one frame at a time), the user experience is just as good - if not better - as the “real” thing.
I wonder what the next industry will be to fall to the mighty mobile? MP3 players? Certainly. The PC itself? I think so anyway.
Manga and Anime for that matter would seem to be naturals for handsets and mobile devices. The target audience also relies heavily on their mobile devices and are big consumers of mobile content.
Given the growing popularity of Manga and Anime in the US, I wonder why there is such a lack of portable content for handsets and devices such as the PSP. There would seem to be a great opportunity…
Mobile manga
Mobile manga: Japan Times has a discussion of the business angles of 2D black/white graphic stories in Japan… the business of moving dead-tree versions had been in decline, and now is pushed off the precipice by the move to mobile…
Hi Russel:
Indeed, I’d say manga is a sleeping giant for mobile content.. at least here in Japan for starters. We shot a demo. video of that tech. at Mobidec last Sept. and another shoot from KDDI’s EZ-Book portal launch in April 2005.
Both video clips are freely available to watch here
It should be noted that the content partners actually love this opportunity to re-purpose their exisitng content and easily sell it for almost the same price yet at a lower ‘per unit’ raw material cost. Also, extra bonus functions like sounds and ‘vibrations’ for certain scenes can be included when consuming manga content on a mobile device that is obviously not possible in the plain paper version.
Finally I should point out for you that the first camera phone in Japan was actually Sharp’s J-SH04 (for then J-Phone, now Vodafone) in 2000. Seems like only yesterday and yet somehow long, long ago..
Cheers
Thanks for the comment, Lars and the correction. You’re right - it was a typo and I’ll correct it.
Russell