With a Nod to Amazon, Dangdang Launches Its E-Book Platform, Apps

Just as the rumors said, the Chinese e-commerce site Dangdang (NYSE:DANG) is ‘doing an Amazon’ and today launching its own e-book platform that’s accompanied by e-reading apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

And so the site now has a dedicated digital book download section – at e.dangdang.com – which is starting off with promotional sales on its initial 50,000 titles. More will be added in due course. For example, the Walter Isaacson biography on Steve Jobs is marked at nearly half-price in the e-bookstore, down to just 42 RMB (US$6.60).

The new store has a handful of categories, such as comics, history, and pulp fiction – but there’s no sign of the rumored magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

In a press release this evening, Dangdang’s CEO, Li Guo-qing said:

We are excited to break new ground with the launch of the e-book platform for our customers […] We are positive about the e-book market in China. While we expect the revenue contribution from e-book sales to be modest initially, we believe that e-books will strengthen our leading position in the online book retailing market and play an increasingly important role in our media segment going forward.

Next year, Dangdang will release it’s own e-reader – just as Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) did with its first Kindle – to support its new platform. Until then, Chinese smartphone owners can buy any of its e-book catalog and view them on their phones, although the e-reader apps don’t seem to have hit either the iTunes App Store or the Android Market quite yet.