Because of the display restriction on Chinese character, most Mainland Chinese buy Hanlin as their e-reader instead of Amazon’s Kindle(2009), Sony’s Reader(2009), Polymer’s Readius(2009) and Plastic Logic’s D7(2009).
Slightly larger than a Palm, a Hanlin e-reader cost abut 2000 yuan and is able to decode a file of different formats including PDF file.
“There are more than a million mainlanders who read habitually on e- readers today.” said Mr. Zhao Zeqing, chief executive of Mobread.com. ( Chan 2009)
Although such comments reflecting Mr. Zhao’s hope on sales, among those inventory technologies, e-reader is only one of the choices. E-book reading on a Net book (portable computer with size that are relatively smaller than a Notebook) is common, Mobile phone book and QR code (2009) are not really new things at all. However, are these technologies changing our reading habit? Well, you may say “Yes” by comparing main brand newspapers’ declining sales figure to the increasing numbers of Net book owners, but you can also say “No” when you really look into what the people are reading actually.
In Hong Kong, you are not hard to find people holding a piece of free Tabloid sized newspaper in hands. These newspapers are distributed along the gateways of mass transportation network. They contain news that is short in length but many advertisements on each page. Many of them provide navigation address for readers to follow up details on web. Without the technological costs barriers in reading, people still enjoy reading a genre that is free and convenient to obtain. The high exposure to public and the “bridging” function between real world and cyber space are other reasons for its dominance.
Video source:
youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50x8h7fF4DU&feature=related
Reference:
Chan, S. 2009, ‘E-readers becoming last word in books’, South China Morning Post, 8 April 2009, viewed 19 August 2009
Sony Reader, Sony, viewed 19 August 2009
http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/reader-ebook
Kindle, Amazon, viewed 19 August 2009
QR code, denso-wave, viewed 19 August 2009
http://www.denso-wave.com/qrcode/aboutqr-e.html
Readius, Polymer, viewed 19 August 2009
Product, Plastic Logic’s, viewed 19 August 2009
http://www.plasticlogic.com/index.php
‘ Plastic Logic: The Full D7 Demo Video’, allthingsd, viewed 19 August 2009
