Palm and the Chinese e-book market
“China’s largest PC firm, Legend Group, is now selling a Chinese language Palm OS handheld in China. The Legend Palm 168 features a color screen, MP3 player, dictionary and voice recorder. The Legend Palm 168 has a 3.5 inch, 240 x 320 pixel screen that can display over 65,000 colors. It has a ‘virtual graffiti’ area which can be hidden to allow full screen photos and ebooks.” – Palm Infocenter.
The TeleRead take: In the e-book area, the Legend Palm will face competition from makers of dedicated devices. Oh, and then there’ s the ever-present, ever-pesky format question. Global Sources says: “Companies…believe that developing a content format that allows interoperability, accessibility and reusability is vital to stimulating demand.” Hint, hint for the Open eBook Forum. Do you really want to write off the Chinese market? The same article also has a few choice passages on the role of government in stimulating demand in China and Taiwan–exactly what TeleRead has been saying for years.
The demand for e-book devices hasn’t been as strong as analysts had hoped. However, suppliers in Taiwan and mainland China are expecting a strong market to develop within the education sector. The government in Taiwan has initiated several education programs that integrate the use of e-books in schools. In addition to the export potential, the government has also launched experimental programs to promote e-book devices through an association organized by the Ministry of Education, the National Science Council and the Taipei Computer Association, along with about 30 handheld device manufacturers and software developers. The programs involve the use of e-books among Taiwan’s 3.8 million elementary and high school students.
In mainland China, Taiwan’s Argosy Research Inc. has been working with the Education Department in Beijing to provide 1,000 trial e-books for schools in the capital city. The company, which plans to ship some 300,000 e-books to the world market in 2003, projects the size of the market in mainland China’s education sector to grow by over 10 million a year.
“Using e-books in schools with local government cooperation can resolve copyright issues and create volume demand,” said Argosy vice president George Wang.
In the end, this isn’t a Communist issue or a capitalistic issue. It’s an education and marketing issue. Schools and libraries can play important roles in the popularization of e-books if the private side is sensible about formats and everyone is sensible about the need for balanced copyright policies.
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