Who Will Own Millions of Chinese E-readers?

China's digital publishing industry in 2009 recorded a growth rate of 42 percent on the year before.

However, there has been no dominant player yet like the Amazon's Kindle in the country and the immature copyright system is widely believed to be a bottleneck for the industry.

Our Liao Jibo brings us more.

A recent survey conducted by China Mobile shows that over 30 percent of Chinese cell-phone users are ready to start e-reading without the feeling of flipping papers in reading a physical book.

"I used to stuff my pack with many books before traveling and now I only need a cell-phone."

"I usually do quite a lot of reading on my e-book when I am waiting to pick up my girl from kindergarten."

Liu Yingjian is the board chairman of Hanvon, a local company that focuses on consumer electronics. Last year, the company sold an average of 100-thousand touch-screen e-books every month. That was almost 100 times more than late 2008 when the gadget first appeared on the Chinese market.

Liu Yingjian says the company has always made research and development their top priority.

"Apple has set a good example for us. All the content services should be based on a sound device."

A number of high-tech giants in China have already swooped in the market after realizing its huge potential. The chairman of Hanvon says only advanced technologies can help an electronic company survive in an emerging market which is full of clones.

Having a little extra technology may not be a difficult thing for a company like Hanvon, but the copyright system, which is far from perfect in China, may actually fence the country's fledgling e-book market.

Now each of Hanvon's new devices has some 10-thousand books in its memory, but almost no new best-sellers. And its online bookstore is limited.

Liu Yingjian admits that the way of negotiating copyright with individual authors directly is ineffective. He says continuing expanding the market might be the solution.

"One day we will have 5-million users and at that time, paying copyright fees will be much easier for publishers."

Having 5-million users may not be that far away for the company, given that in China, a paper-book is usually at least four times more expensive than its digital edition.

But Liu Yingjian says he believes e-books will not be able to replace physical books completely, because after all, no matter how low the price e-books go in the future, they still run on batteries.

"I think eventually e-book will become the common one, the affordable one and physical book will be categorized into one kind of luxury collectable, but total replacement is unlikely."

In China, the traditional publishing industry, with a revenue of 60-billion yuan last year and a 20 percent increase, had already been surpassed by its digital counterpart in both total revenue and growth rate.

Liao Jibo, CRI news.