Hanvon Technology, a Beijing based company, which claims to own as much as 70 percent of the Chinese e-reader market plans to enter the U.S this year. Hanvon told Bloomberg at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.
The next dominant player in the Chinese e-reader market would be Amazon, which owns 10 percent of the market share in China after its international Kindle version was released last year.
Hanvon believes that its advance technology is its strongest edge in this e-reader battle with Amazon.
“The key in the U.S. market is a high-tech product at a low cost,” Jessica Zhang, a general manager at Beijing-based Hanvon said. “Amazon isn’t a technical company but we are, so we’re going to try to make a better product.” Havon currently has about 300 research and development staff working on e-readers.
Hanvon is known for its handwriting recognition technology and has provided technical expertise to companies like Nokia, Huawei and Acer. Besides revealing its plan to enter the U.S, Hanvon has also launched the world’s first high-resolution electronic tablet at the CES. The 200dpi tablet is also incorporated with features like instant translation, voice reading and text search.
However, Hanvon hasn’t established any agreements with publishers to distribute content on its devices. Amazon certainly has the upper hand in e-books partnerships and distribution. Although technology and cost are factors to consider, availability of content is still most crucial. We shall see how the WISEreader, Hanvon’s line of e-reader products, will perform when it hits the U.S.
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