The E-Book Goes To China

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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chinaSony (SNE) and Amazon (AMZN) could have a new and large market for their e-book readers. The head of China Mobile (CHL), the largest cellular company in the world, sees part of his firm’s future growth in the e-reader market. E-readers can be set up so that they use the 3G wireless internet to download books.

But, Japanese and American e-reader firms should not become too excited. China may use local technology to supply the demand for portable digital books. China Mobile appears ready to use Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group to provide it with hardware.

The China Mobile plans are a good example of an idea made popular in America moving to the mainland with very few if any benefits to the US companies that championed the technology and market in the first place. China mobile has well over 400 million subscribers. E-reader sales to these customers could certainly top several million easily surpassing sales figures in America.  Amazon (AMZN) will see no revenue from the rise of the e-book market in China. Foxconn products may even make their way into the US, challenging Amazon’s e-reader sales.

China Mobile’s decision to enter the e-reader market is hardly piracy, but it is certainly aggressive borrowing of a good idea.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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