The popularity of the mediums by which e-Books are delivered to readers really does seem to vary across the world, and is constantly changing, driven by consumer behaviour. In the West, in countries such as the United States, e-book readers and tablets seem to be the most popular. For example, Princeton Survey Research Associates International conducted a survey in January 2014, in which their findings showed that 50% of Americans own a tablet such as Apple’s iPad, or an e-reader such as Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook. This figure has shown an increase from 43% in September last year.
Companies such as Chennai-based Magzster, a magazine publishing platform, now also make e-Books available through their app; particularly as the amount of content available through their platform, and the number of downloads they get continues to increase. Currently, Magzter is said to offer in excess of 3,500 magazines over tablets and smartphones, recently clocking 18 million downloads. Other platforms like Rockstand continue to increase the amount of e-Books available through they app, giving Indian readers digital content in the way they prefer it.
A further look into the future was recently shared by Hiroshi Mikitani, the visionary CEO and founder of the mammoth Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten. Mr Mikitani told CNN that his plans are to turn Viber (which Rakuten recently acquired for a staggering $900 Million) into a full e-commerce platform, and sell e-Books through Kobo (which Rakuten also own) on the messaging technology for smartphones.
Image credit: Robert Scoble on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]