E-book

Recently, I’ve often heard about e-book in the news. I ‘m a book lover. I have been waiting to see it for a long time, but I’ve never seen it in electric goods stores.
In fact, few years ago, some electric companies have once tried to enter the e-book market , but failed and bailed out of it,

why didn’t it become a popular in Japan?

And what happened from now on?
When they produced it in 2004, there were some devices in the market, DS(Nintendo), electric-dictionary and cell phone, and especially, cell phone has the same features as e-book.
I think that the reason cell phone wins is high-functions.

Usually, Japanese cell phone has very highly-functions which can use handheld texts and music and Web. Just at that time, Japanese younger generation got to be crazy for thumb novel. Their services were overlapping. In the end, consumer has chosen more convenience one.
Now, tastes are growing diverse, if they would try again, they might become successful. But I'm concerned about it.
It is due to differences between English and Japanese. In Japanese we can figure out a lot of information with less view, because of Kanji character. Kanji is shaped by picture, if I don’t know one Kanji phrase, we can imagine the meaning from each Kanji character. So then, we tend to prefer the good visual effects, even to books. In addition, we tend to describe with less words.

So I think, it would be difficult to get the win, like in US.
I’m convinced that enriched softwares will decide their future. When I read English books, I really think that English is difficult for reading, because, a lot of alike and meaningless line words. There is serious for poor readers, like foregner and Dyslexia and sight-dimmed eyes people.

I think there is in here the basic need, for the development of the software, to educate English and to facilitate visualization with emphasis or reading assistance tools or the screen good for eyes.
Also, they still have copyright issues. I'm ofeten impressed by effots of Japanese companies, but it would be difficult to solve these kinds of issues by only a company, so it’s important to cooperate with other companies, like Google and Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. By doing this, if the new wave will come, they could change their systems for it.
Well, very recently, I’ve heard that some newspapers were forced to cease their publications. Drying up completely, I’ll really miss it. Reading newspaper is the most favarite things in the morning. The publishing industry will also face the powerful tide of change in society. I'm wondering what kind of world will be coming!