Cell phone sites for cartoon strips are booming, as is demand for popular titles. But at the same time, some famous "manga" artists are bypassing publishing houses to offer their works to "keitai" (cell phone) sites directly.
Toppan Printing Co. in April 2003 became one of the first firms to offer cartoon strips via cell phones. It currently offers 55 titles...in collaboration with major publishers.
The cartoons, which are converted to digital form from their original paper edition, cost 30 yen to 100 yen per episode. Company officials said they plan to add 100 more titles by the end of March.
(Tadashi Awano, manager of the firm's e-business division) explained there are basically two ways to display cartoon strips on cell phones -- page scroll and picture card.
For page scroll, users follow the original print layout by scrolling the display horizontally and vertically. For picture cards, each frame is made to fit the handset display, so readers can move to the next frame by clicking a button.
Awano said only about 10 percent to 20 percent of handsets currently in use are equipped to display cartoon strips fully, and he expects readership to increase sharply as more people switch to the latest models. He also said the company plans to expand its manga lineup for women.
According to the Research Institute for Publications, the country's overall magazine and book market peaked in 1996 at 2.66 trillion yen and then started to decline...
... growth in cell phone use is in inverse proportion to that of cartoon strip readership, as mobiles sap the time and money that young people in the past spent on reading printed matter.
press release | Japan Times
~In the USA cell phone use for any published products other than porn will never be profitable enough to attract big name graphic artists (comparable to Japanese Manga creators)?
Posted by Cieciel at September 29, 2005 12:21 AM