Yesterday I was reading the latest issue of Shonen Jump and noticed the back cover ad for the Viz Manga iPad app. Through the app, readers can buy digital copies of a number of popular Viz manga. This is certainly great news if you already own an iPad and have a love for manga, but what about the rest of us who read our eBooks on Nooks, Kindles, or Kobos?
It seems likely, that if manga on the iPad is popular enough, it will find its way to other platforms. Popular iPad/iPhone apps generally spawn Android app versions, so perhaps there is some hope there. But who is actually reading manga on an iPad? Graphic novels and manga skew towards a decidely younger demographic than the 30 to 50 – somethings that make up the bulk of initial iPad users.
As time goes on, it is reasonable to expect more young people to own iPads. There are already a number of colleges requiring students to own iPads or providing them to students for free. But the iPad is still a fairly expensive tablet that will not serve as a viable laptop replacement for much of the college and high school aged demographic. And since the iPad was released, it now faces more competition from Android based tablets as well as improved eBook readers like the Nook Color. So it seems likely that Viz will eventually support its manga on other platforms.
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[…] for eReaders like the Kindle or Nook. The number of popular titles is growing on the iPad, but few of the largest part of the manga buying demographic, teens and college students, own iPads. A growing number of popular manga are also readable on publisher web sites in a web browser where […]
[…] I’d wondered just how successful iPad exclusive digital manga could be given the probably small overlap between the manga reader and iPad owner demographics. Most iPad […]