In a development indicative of the growth of Japan's digital publishing industry, key player Celsys Inc. was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's second section on Nov. 4. This is in addition to being listed on startup market Centrex.
Celysys functions as a provider of authoring tools for manga manufacturers and an e-books-support business, according to their website.
The digital manga market, accessed primarily via cell phones, is large in Japan. According to a report by research firm Impress R&D, the size of the e-book market in 2009 was ¥57.4 billion. That is 23.7 percent larger than the previous year. Around 89 percent of this market (¥51.3 billion) comes from Japanese cell phones, 10 percent is from PCs and a mere 1 percent comes from emerging platforms such as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iBookstore.
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