New Delhi: Literary buffs who always want to bury their head in some absorbing prose, can now do so on a screen two inches wide. Novels and even comic books are available for reading on the mobile phone.
Already a big hit in Japan and China, momics (mobile comics) as they are called, are all set to capture the Indian market. On an experimental basis one of the mobile content providers has already rolled out Amar Chitra Katha on the mobile, which they claim was a success.
The first Indian mobile novel Neelakannukal (Blue Eyes) has been written in Malayalam and distributed free to 600 mobile users. The writer is now in talks with the cellular operators for making it available on demand.
"With over 96 million GSM subscribers alone, the market for mobile comics, novels and books is very huge," says Rajiv Hiranandani, of mobile2win, a content developer, noting "in Japan and Korea, entire books are available on mobile, but in India they are still to pick up in a very big way."
Hiranandani, who is developing mobile comics says last year, they introduced comics in China, and they were a huge success. The market there is very big, with over 400 million subscribers.
"In India, we plan to bring them out shortly first in English and in another 5-6 months in Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and Telugu," he says adding they rolled out Amar Chitra Katha on comics a few months back on experimental basis and it was a success.
The first Indian mobile novel too has been released though to limited users and its writer P R Harikumar, a lecturer at Sree Sankara College at Kaladi, says "the size of the novel with all its six episodes is 70 KB. This is embedded in a screen as a Java programme. Any mobile phone, which has Java facility can install this file successfully."
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