Taiwan-based small- to medium-size LCD panel and electrophoretic display (EPD) maker E Ink Holdings (EIH) is actively developing the non-English speaking market for e-book readers and expects Shanda Interactive Entertainment, the largest publishing company in China, to become its second largest client in China.

EIH has recently cooperated with Acer for the launch of its LumiRead e-book reader, as well as with local Russia vendors to launch e-book readers.

Scott Liu, chairman of EIH, indicated that Shanda is the largest online publishing company and 7-8 out of the top-ten websites in China cooperate with Shanda. Shanda Literature, a subsidiary of Shanda, has recently launched Bambook e-book reader to a specific group of readers with a price of 99 yuan (US$14.86), and the first shipments of the 3000 e-book readers were sold out in three days. Liu noted that the quick sales of Shanda's Bambook is due to the advantage of rich content from the company, as well as the low price.

Shanda has a large library of Internet content and readers, especially online serial novels which is growing by one million words per day, attracting readers to follow the novels online like TV dramas. Liu said that online novels have no copyright issues, and represent cheap, time-sensitive content helping to generate demand for e-book readers.