Russell

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

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…

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…