TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to statistics compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Asia Pacific region is the world's third largest entertainment and media market. The entertainment and media market for the Asia Pacific region as a whole was estimated to have been worth approximately US$331.9 billion, a figure which was expected to rise to US$412.7 billion by 2013. This is an impressive rate of growth. Furthermore, mainland China and Taiwan are, respectively, the largest and fourth largest digital gaming markets in Asia. Clearly, the Asian digital content market is a market with high growth potential.
Mainland China and Taiwan are both Chinese-speaking countries with significant cultural similarities; there is thus considerable potential for the creation of synergy between the mainland Chinese and Taiwanese digital publishing industries. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in interaction between Taiwan and mainland China in the digital publishing business, with mainland Chinese e-book companies actively exploring opportunities for collaboration with Taiwanese software and IT hardware firms. Examples include the strategic collaboration between Acer and Founder in the PC, communications, PCB and e-book fields, the establishment of a Taiwan subsidiary by the Hanwang e-book company in October 2010.
As regards e-book hardware, currently more than 90% of the e-book readers sold worldwide by the two leading global brands are manufactured in Taiwan; Taiwanese companies control everything from upstream materials manufacturing to downstream system development. On the software side, Taiwanese firms already have significant experience in book digitalization, can provide first-class publishing layout design, and have considerable success in developing effective business models for e-book transaction platforms. However, the overall size of the publishing industry in Taiwan is limited. Cross-strait collaboration should provide significant positive results in terms of attracting more investment for Taiwan's e-book hardware and digitalization platform businesses, and the development of the mainland Chinese e-book market.
In the new era that the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) has ushered in, Taiwan is working actively to integrate resources, and expand exchange between companies. If mainland China's available publishing content resources can be integrated with Taiwan's e-book hardware and digitalization platforms, this would contribute to the pooling of the strengths of Taiwanese and mainland Chinese industry, helping to create a bright future for the industry as a whole. Taiwan has already opened up its markets to mainland Chinese investment in 204 areas. For more information about investing in Taiwan, visit the InvesTaiwan website at http://investtaiwan.org
Contacts
Department of Investment Services,
Ministry of Economic Affairs, R.O.C.
Snow Tsao, +886-2-2389-2111 ext. 613
cctsao@moea.gov.tw