That’s what an article by Paul Harper in Seeking Alpha says. Of course we’ve seen that Chinese “me too” ereaders are becoming commonplace (no need even to report on them any more), but China Mobile has cut a few deals with manufacturers to make units with wireless connectivity. According to the article the company expects to sell half a million units in China this year at retail price of $430. The government is also looking at distributing 165 million ereaders to students in place of textbooks.
However, as the article points out the problem of piracy is major. That’s why there is probably little opportunity, in my opinion, for Western publishers to take advantage of the Chinese ebook boom. When i was traveling in China, and this was years ago, you could find any US book you wanted for just a few cents, and it has gotten way worse since then. I could have bought the most recent copy of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for $5, albeit printed on lousy paper. (And I did pick up a couple of books by Winston Churchill which were long out of print int he West.) Given the Chinese government’s lack of interest in protecting intellectual property it will probably be years before any western publisher makes any real money out of the ebook market.
