At a time when China just shuttered iBooks for unspecified reasons, China Daily reports that e-reading is nonetheless going strong in China. Amazon China just released a survey to commemorate World Book Day. The survey of more than 11,000 people from about 500 cities reported that more than 80% of respondents read for at least half an hour per day, and 40% spend more than an hour per day. E-book readers rose 6% from the previous year to 84%.
The survey showed that 56% thought digital reading was inexpensive and e-reading devices are handy and easy to carry. Also, the survey showed the Kindle beating out smartphones as the preferred e-reader for the first time. Also, people were more likely to finish reading e-books that cost more.
The article doesn’t say anything about the sampling techniques used, so I’m a little skeptical about the figures. Nonetheless, China is a big market for e-readers, which is part of what makes the iBooks closure so frustrating for Apple. Even if the numbers aren’t entirely accurate, they do demonstrate that e-books are very popular in China at the moment.