2010-11-05 10:05

BEIJING - A senior Chinese publication official Thursday called on domestic E-book firms to roll out products with enriched content and functions to improve market competitiveness.

Sun Shoushan, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), said Chinese companies should boost competitiveness of their products and "make breakthroughs in core technologies" research concerning electronic reading.

Citing iPad, a globally popular tablet computer series of the US company Apple Inc, as an example, Sun said domestic products of its kind lagged behind in design, operation, function and content supply.

Efforts should be made to enrich local producers' existing e-book series to target different customers and fields, and explore and expand the e-reading market, he added.

China's e-reading market is among the fastest growing in the world. In 2009, the number of e-books sold in China reached 3.82 million. In the first half of 2010, the figure amounted to over 20 percent of the world's total and was second only to the United States.