Nomura Research Institute (NRI), a Japan-based think-tank and systems integrator, has predicted that the market for e-book content in Japan will grow to be worth $2.9 billion in 2015. This is 2.8 times its value in 2010.
About 14 million digital book readers will have been shipped to the domestic market by the end of 2015, up 18-fold from the 780,000 that will have been shipped as of the end of this year, the institute said. Further, it says that an explosion of e-book readers, combined with the anticipated spread of smartphones with e-book reader applications, will cause available e-book content to greatly diversify.
The year 2010 saw the e-book market firmly establish itself. US-based Apple released the iPad tablet computer in May while South Korea's Samsung Electronics started marketing its e-book reader Galaxy Tab last month. Japan's Sony and Sharp also released their own rival devices - Reader and Galapagos - in December.
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