News

NTT Solmare Corporation (Headquartered in Osaka, President: Hiroki Oohashi, hereinafter NTT Solmare), owns COMIC- C'moA (*1) -- Japan's No. 1 mobile comic sites, launches a popular title in India, “CRAYON Shinchan” (Futabasha Publishers Ltd., Headquartered in Tokyo, President: Hiroshi Morozumi) in a mobile comic service, “Chhota Comics” provided by ZERO-SUM Ltd.(Headquartered in Kyoto, President: Chikara Kikuchi, hereinafter ZERO-SUM) for Indian mobile operator, Vodafone Essar (*2)(Headquartered in Mumbai, India).

*1: Official i-mode site by NTT DOCOMO, official EZweb site by KDDI, and official Yahoo! Mobile portal site by SOFTBANK MOBILE.

*2: As of the end of March 2011, Vodafone Essar boasts the 3rd largest number of mobile users in India (approximately 134, 56 million people)

1．Background and Objectives

According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the number of mobile subscribers in India reached 811,59 million as of end March 2011 and it is the second largest market behind China. As a result of auction of 3G service for private mobile operators, competition to capture customers among Indian mobile operators is intensified and each mobile carrier seeks for their services’ uniqueness. Also, to raise upward Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), each company focuses on value-added contents services. One of them, comic service is the most notable contents.

NTT Solmare’s mobile comics have been distributed since May 8, 2010 in Chhota Comics provided to an Indian mobile operator, Vodafone Essar. Furthermore, more than 100 titles are now available and ZERO-SUM and NTT Solmare are distributing the largest number of Manga in India.

2．Service summary

ZERO-SUM’s mobile comic service is deployed as “Chhota Comics”, which is an official service of “Vodafone live!” by Vodafone Essar. The price of content is 15 rupee (about 30 yen) per chapter. Currently, these contents are compatible with more than 500 models produced by 4 device makers (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and BlackBerry) and we are going to expand the number of compatible models.

3. Future Vision

ZERO-SUM and NTT Solmare believe that the distribution of “CRAYON Shinchan” promotes mobile comic market in India and raises the profile of Japanese comics there.

We keep working hard on collecting a wide variety of comics and improving them to entertain customers with high quality Japanese comics.

Utilizing our experience of domestic success and contents source, we will expand and promote mobile Manga service in this world’s second largest market.