2Dfacto E-book Service Debut

Building on past announcements, DoCoMo and notable publishing partners will roll 2Dfacto e-books for mobile Jan. 12th http://bit.ly/hC9SZU

Official Press Release

2Dfacto, Inc., under a plan to become a new type of integrated digital/physical hybrid bookstore, announced today that it will open its first online bookstore on January 12 to sell electronic books to users of smartphones and e-book readers marketed by NTT DOCOMO, INC.

2Dfacto is a joint-venture company established by Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP), DOCOMO and CHI Group Co., Ltd. (CHI) on December 21, 2010. The new e-bookstore, also called 2Dfacto, will be based on “honto,” DNP’s existing online e-book retail service. The new e-bookstore initially will offer about 20,000 titles of literature and Japanese manga comic books with plans to rapidly increase the catalog to some 100,000 titles by spring. New books, magazines, newspapers and rich-media e-books embedded with music and video content are expected to be added gradually.

At launch, customers will be able to purchase and enjoy e-books using seven of the latest smartphones and an e-book reader offered by DOCOMO: Xperia, GALAXY S, REGZA Phone, LYNX 3D, Optimus chat, GALAXY Tab and SH-07C e-book reader (launching on January 21). 2Dfacto will be accessible from other smartphones and e-book readers to be announced by DOCOMO.

2Dfacto, to further expand the scope of the “honto” service within 2011, is continuing to discuss linkage of its system with “bk1,” the DNP group’s existing online bookstore offering some one million titles of printed books, as well as the group’s physical bookstore chains Maruzen, JUNKUDO and Bunkyodo. The result would be a truly digital/physical hybrid network comprising an online store for e-books, an online store for printed books and physical stores for printed books.

Under the envisaged plan, the website for this hybrid bookstore network would offer conveniences such as recommendations based on previous purchases from all three types of bookstores, network-wide loyalty points and an e-bookshelf to view network-wide purchases. Other special functions planned to be launched this year will enable users to read the same e-book on multiple devices and share bookmarks and marked information among multiple devices.