Interview with Bitway International Business Manager Posted

ICV2 now features an interview with Masaaki Shimizu, General Manager of International Business Strategy for Bitway, the subsidiary of Japan’s Toppan Printing focused on wholesale digital distribution of manga titles across multiple digital platforms such as mobile phones, e-readers and browser-based readers.

Bitway has invested $750,000 into Crunchyroll for a minority stake in the Asian entertainment portal in order for the company to develop a platform for the distribution of digital manga in the US that will be resold as a turnkey digital distribution platform for manga publishers, primarily in the US. Shimizu will be at panelist a ICv2’s Conference on Comics & Digital at New York Comic Con/New York Anime Fair.

Read More for an excerpt from the interview.

Can you provide an estimate of the size of the market in Japan (in yen or dollars) for downloads of manga during the current year?

We estimate the total market at about 55 billion yen (about $654.5 million).

What is your estimate for the total digital book market (including manga) in Japan for 2010?

We estimate that at 67 billion yen (about$797.3 million).

What do you forecast for the total digital market for2011?

We estimate that is will reach 76 billion yen ($904.4 million)

Can you compare 2010 with 2009—what is your estimate of the current growth rate?

We estimate that there will be about a 16% growth rate in mobile manga downloads and about a 20% increase in digital downloads for new devices like the iPad.

You indicated that growth was slowing—what was the growth rate between 2008 and 2009?

The growth rate for mobile phone downloads is slowing. It was just over 30% between 2008 and 2009.

The rest of the interview, which includes a short list of the publishers represented by Bitway and future US plans can be read at ICV2.