China-based Hanwang Technology, which markets its products under the Hanvon brand, aims to become the largest vendor of e-book readers worldwide in two years, according to company chairman Liu Yingjian.
Liu indicated that Hanwang's competitiveness comes from its low cost production and product functions, and it is currently the biggest e-book reader vendor in China. With a correct strategy, Hanwang should be able to become the leading e-book reader vendor worldwide in 2011-2012, he said.
Hanwang shipped 266,000 e-book readers in 2009, falling short of its shipment goal of 500,000 units for the year mainly due to limited material supply and production capacity, Liu said while attending Computex 2010.
The vendor shipped about 180,000 e-book readers in China in the first quarter of 2010, and it expects its e-book reader shipments in China to increase about 300% on year to about one million units, Liu said.
While the company claims to be the second largest e-book reader worldwide, Digitimes Research's figures showed that Hanwang had 13.5% of the worldwide market, lagging Amazon's 35.5% and Barnes and Noble's 18.4% in the first quarter of 2010. Worldwide shipments in the quarter totaled 1.43 million units.
In China, Hanwang took 63.5% of the e-book reader market in first-quarter 2010, according to Digitimes Research.
Of the one million units that Hanwang aims to ship in 2010, 50% will be produced by outside manufacturing partners, Liu said.
Manufacturing partners in Taiwan for Hanwang's e-book readers may include Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Inventec Appliance, and Pegatron Technology, Liu said. For its TouchPad tablet PCs, manufacturing partners may include First International Computer (FIC) and Pegatron, Liu added.
Hanwang has started marketing its e-book readers in Europe. For the Europe market, Hanwang last year announced a deal with publisher Harper Collins for content supply.
Hanwang plans to launch color e-book readers at the end of year worldwide. For the Taiwan market, Hanwang's e-book readers will hit the shelves in the second half of 2010. The first model to be available in Taiwan will be the N681 with built-in WiFi, according to the company. The N681 currently sells for 3,880 yuan (US$567.95) in China.
Hanwang digitizes content for content providers, who will receive 80% of the profits from content sales, according to the company. Content providers determine the prices of the offerings.