Whether operators can “leave” e-books to the end

With the launch of China Telecom Tianyi Reading Platform yesterday, the three major operators, including China Mobile and China Telecom, will all put the e-book wireless reading platform in place within half a year.
From the point of view of the e-book industry chain consisting of book publishers, content providers, reader manufacturers, and telecom operators, e-book leaders are not yet clear, but the expectation of telecom operators is the same as that of the wireless music market. The same status, e-books may become the operator's second "color ring."

The three major models emerge

The e-book market that has just emerged is still in an early stage of chaos. At present, the loudest voice is the terminal vendor-dominated model. This model is dominated by Amazon and Apple in the United States, and is also followed by companies such as Hanwang and Founder in China.

Amazon and Apple rely on Kindle and iPad readers to attract users to purchase, and then rapidly integrate traditional publishing resources to sell the books electronically for users to pay for online downloads and downloads, thereby sharing with publishers.

In the Amazon model, mobile operators are merely channels for content download, while Amazon, which provides terminal devices and content download platforms, is the industry leader.

Hanwang's imitation is like this. It has invested tens of millions of yuan in the construction of Hanwang Book City and the purchase of content. It also divides it with content providers and establishes a "terminal + content" model.

There are also content providers who want to strengthen their control. For example, Shanda Literature relies on China's largest online literature platform and integrates it into the terminal to launch its own brand of readers. At the end of August of this year, Shanda Literature also launched the e-book Bambook, announcing that 999 yuan in lost sales accounted for the market.

Analyst analyst Zhang Yanan predicted that sales of Chinese e-book terminals could reach 1.3 million this year. However, this quantity cannot meet the industrial advancement needs of terminal manufacturers and even content manufacturers. What they need is greater shipments.

The price reduction process for hardware has accelerated. Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle from 259 US dollars to 189 US dollars, making the Kindle sales in the first half of 2010 three times the first half of 2009. It is expected that there will still be more room for growth in the e-book market in the second half of 2010.

The model of telecom operators is actually "ready-made." The background sharing model is the long-established wireless value-added service model. The services such as CRBT have matured.

The operator-led model is represented by China Mobile's mobile reading base. Compared with mobile operators in the United States, Chinese operators have stronger influence and control, and have sufficient resources to negotiate with content providers, establish download platforms, and promote terminals. China Mobile develops 3G e-book business through customized terminals and cooperation with content providers.

There are publisher-dominated models, but the power of this model is thin. Such as the Shanghai Century Publishing Group, through the introduction of the sea reader, built its copyright content. However, the exclusive content of a publishing house is limited and it is difficult to satisfy the user's rich and varied reading requirements. This model has pushed hard even in the United States with a super media group.

Operator power

Compared with other players, telecom operators are the ones most desperately waiting for e-books to cut their prices and volume. Telecom operators hold more than 800 million mobile phone users' billing platforms. As long as the e-book contents are put on the platform, they can be advanced. The proceeds.

China Telecom’s Tianyi reading platform plan announced yesterday covers both terminal and content. Terminal operators can implement multi-platform strategies. Mobile phones and various portable electronic devices with built-in Internet access modules can be used as carriers. Wireless access methods such as CDMA and WiFi are used to provide services for users.

In terms of content planning, China Telecom Tianyi Reading has signed cooperation agreements with more than 50 content partners. The e-book fee of China Telecom is mainly composed of information fees and communication fees.

The division model of China Telecom and content partners is mainly that China Telecom gets 55% of the revenue, and publishers or content providers get 45%.

China Mobile officially launched its mobile reading service in May this year. Gao Nianshu, general manager of China Mobile’s data department, stated that the proportion of China Mobile and content partners is 6:4. China Unicom also adopts the same ratio as China Mobile.

Analysys International analysts said that in the second quarter of 2010, China’s mobile phone reading market had a total revenue of 617 million yuan. Among them, mobile phone revenue was 567 million yuan, accounting for 91.30% of the total; other revenue was 54.07 million yuan, accounting for 8.7%, and there is room for continued improvement in the future.

After the operator purchases a set of copyrights and distributes them, the greater the user base for using the mobile reading service, the more profitable mobile reading will be. In order to open the mobile reading market of more than 800 million mobile phone users, operators can make huge upfront subsidies and investments.

Ren Wenbo, a professor at the School of Journalism at Renmin University of China, believes that mobile phone users far exceed any readers, and that the outstanding advantage of mobile phone reading is that charges are not a problem.