"Electronic book bag" into the classroom dilemma

At this point, the Press and Publication Administration’s voice on “will vigorously foster the e-sales package project” has just fallen, and manufacturers there have long been active in action. Recently, Shanda officially launched the "Bambook" e-book reader. This reader, which sells for only 899 yuan, is regarded by all parties as the most suitable product for the "electronic schoolbag". Coincidentally, Hanwang Technology has also reported that it is teaming up with Intel Corp. to create "electronic schoolbags." There is no doubt that e-schoolbags are changing from a vague concept to a hot one. However, the fact behind the hot weather is that the e-bags really ripe, the road is still long.

100 billion yuan cake triggers industry "riot"

According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, currently there are 320 million students in China, with an average of 20 textbooks for each student. The total number of prints per semester exceeds 6 billion, and the number of books per year reaches 12 billion. The workbooks used by students are With several times the number of textbooks, each class will be calculated in 6 volumes for each semester, and will reach 24 billion copies. The textbooks and textbooks will add up to 36 billion volumes, with a total value of more than 100 billion yuan.

This means that "Electronic Schoolbags" instead of traditional schoolbags have a large market of at least 100 billion yuan and do not include an extended market for ancillary products. In fact, the "electronic schoolbag" is an important end product for the education information network. With government support, the market prospect is undoubtedly enormous.

The huge development prospect has triggered the digital publishing industry turmoil. According to incomplete statistics, in a little over one year, dozens of e-book readers, including Hanwang and Fangfang, have successively launched “electronic schoolbags” products. "But these products simply can not enter the market." Wang Wei, a well-known e-book reader sales manager in China, reluctantly pointed out.

"My life has been completely disrupted by the four words of the e-schoolbag." At the end of last year, Wang Wei was attracted by the company's monthly salary of nearly 10,000 yuan and generous company benefits and joined the e-book reader industry. The first job the company arranged for him was to promote "Electronic Schoolbag" products. Wang Wei began marketing more than six months ago.

“The current position of the 'Electric Schoolbag' is the fifth generation of student education auxiliary products following the early teaching machines, electronic dictionaries, dot reading machines, and learning machines. It is still far from providing products for reading electronic materials in the true sense. Because the domestic "electronic schoolbags" products have not been accurate concepts and standards." Wang Wei said, "Everyone is doing their own, do not understand 'electronic schoolbags' does not matter, but where the launch of the product to the General Administration of Press and Publication and other related The department sent them for the government's financial support. In this way, the entire market was badly conditioned by the 'rewards' ethos.

Electronic Textbook: A Game of Old and New Publishing Industry

Wang Wei, a once-in-a-kind IT product "gold salesman," ran into a nail in the "electronic book bag." “Achieving electronic textbooks is no longer technically problematic. However, the current difficulties are in promotion and content.” Turning on the folders in the hand and drawing out a handful of A4 printing papers, Wang Wei started promoting sales for reporters. "Electronic bookbag".

“The content of our product is written by teachers of Tsinghua University Middle School and Huanggang Middle School. It covers all mid-high exam questions in the past 10 years. The teacher gave a detailed solution to each question, and the product content covered Textbooks for all subjects, with bookmarks, handwritten notes, and other functions... "In less than five minutes, Wang Wei introduced his products. "But it's plain, this is still an upgraded version of the handheld learning machine. Can you say someone wants it? There is no teaching material and nothing is nonsense!" Wang Wei reluctantly said, "'Electronic school bag' to get the recognition of the school parents, We must rely on content. None of the 'Electronic Schoolbags' products on the market can provide complete teaching materials. What is the difference between what we sell now and other auxiliary materials?"

"Why does the government support the development of the e-schoolbag project, but does not completely release the content?" Wang Wei has been puzzled.

A related government official, who asked not to be named, provided answers to Wang Wei’s doubts. The biggest shortcoming of the “electronic schoolbag” is the content of the textbook. “As long as we have the teaching materials, the “electronic schoolbags” will be popularized throughout the country for a year. We have done surveys and 70% of parents and schools have said that they can accept the 'electronic schoolbags' that have teaching materials to replace the traditional paper textbooks. However, the key point is that once the textbook content is digitized, the traditional publishing industry is facing death." The official said that at present, at least 70% of domestic publishers rely on textbooks and supplementary resources to survive, if the government requires the publisher to provide electronic Edition textbooks, then these publishers are facing death, and because the proportion of traditional publishing and digital publishing is difficult to determine, digitization of textbooks is still a distant matter. In addition, there are many national versions of textbooks and the speed of updating is relatively fast. Textbook publishing has always been a local monopoly in the country. Therefore, there are still too many problems to be solved in order to realize the nationwide “Electronic Schoolbag” project plan. "The benefits of traditional publishing and digital publishing must be ensured in the future promotion of the 'E-schoolbag'. However, achieving this guarantee may still be a relatively long-term issue."

The current level of e-book reader is difficult to enter the classroom

"I am not very optimistic about e-book readers becoming 'e-schoolbags'." Zheng Xiao, director of the Development Department of the Electronic Video and Audio Network Branch of FLTRP, has thrown a loud voice.

According to some people, the e-book reader industry development problem is that there is no rich digital content resources. In this regard, Zheng Hao is also very helpless. “We have long paid attention to the field of digital publishing. As early as in 2009, we have set up a dedicated 'digital'. "Resource Center', development of content management platform, collaborative translation platform and other work platforms, and more than 20 people responsible for the digital resources of data consolidation, conversion, storage, etc., has invested millions of dollars so far." But so far, there has not been a domestic brand of e-book readers that has caused Zheng Hao to “get in the eye”, and even the most simple search function of the digital dictionary product developed by FLTRP has almost no support, let alone depth. Digital products too.

Just two days ago, Cheng Zheng went to Apple China to “learn the Bible.” They wanted to learn how to develop more suitable software on the iPad. Starting in April of last year, FLTRP has released nearly 100 kinds of learning course software and dictionaries in the Apple Store, digitizing the English-Chinese, German-Chinese, and French-Chinese dictionaries into software on the iPad software platform, and putting those on Confucius Institutes. The paper media dictionary was put on the Internet for people to download and learn Chinese. Users can search, watch video lessons, listen to audio and more. Currently, this software has been downloaded more than tens of thousands of times worldwide.

Zheng Zheng said that the current strategy of the FLTRP is to wait for a powerful product to come out on the one hand; on the other hand, it is constantly doing its part to improve its digital product content and lay the foundation for the development of digital products of the FLTRP.

In addition to the problems of high prices, insufficient humanization, and insufficient electronic content, e-book readers have yet to be clearly defined in the distribution of benefits. She calculated an account for reporters: if a dictionary is priced at 50 yuan, e-books are sold at 3 or 50% off, and other costs such as re-typing, equipment sharing, etc. are counted. The final profit is similar to that of books, and even lower. At present, the number of e-book readers is still relatively small and there is no large-scale purchasing power. The development of “e-schoolbags” does not bring order-level profit growth to publishing companies. It is not difficult to understand that publishing companies are not very positive. .

Industry giants rush to market opportunities

The introduction of e-book readers into the classroom has become a hot topic. In this regard, the Hanwang, which is considered as a landmark company in the industry, is obviously lagging behind. So far, Hanwang does not have a real e-book material.

Wang Bangjiang, general manager of Hanwang’s vice president of electronic paper books, stated that “Our 'electronic schoolbags' is mainly aimed at the digital content of students’ teaching aids, including supplementary books from primary school to high school”. Wang Bangjiang admitted that e-book development is not yet mature. E-book readers are really going into the classroom instead of textbooks. I am afraid there is still a long way to go. “On the technical level, there are difficulties in colorization, note-taking, price cost, and power consumption. In addition, whether educational content is effectively linked, how education systems are reformed, how electronic textbooks are charged, how copyright issues are solved, Xinhua, How to set up the bookstore system and change the teaching model is a difficult problem."

Obviously, Wang Bangjiang also knows the minds of publishers. They think that the time for e-books to enter the classroom is immature. If they want to make money, they must innovate in the business model and get benefits. He believes that all of them are now "frying concepts." In fact, everyone is trying to find a way out. It will take time to really replace paper textbooks. Wang Bangjiang told reporters about their strategy - using textbooks as a supplementary aid for students to provide back-to-the-speech, extra-curricular reading and other functions, similar to learning accumulated products.

For iPad-like electronic products to become the most likely to enter the classroom in the future, Wang Bangjiang does not agree that the first long-term look at the iPad will still have a bad reaction to the eyes, especially for the students are still in the development period, so that the harm is very Big. Currently, E-INK screens are already available for color effects. Moreover, the iPad can be used to access the Internet, children to the Internet, play games, or browse unhealthy content, which are difficult to monitor. He believes that it is still necessary to develop targeted e-book readers.

For China’s implementation of the e-book reader into the classroom, Chen Shaoqiang, director of Hanwang’s electronic paper book division, appears to have sufficient confidence. He disclosed to reporters that the Beijing Science and Technology Commission has allocated a group of funds to Hanwang for “electronic schoolbags”. the study. He even said that with the development of computers, scientific and technological innovations have been continuously improved. After six months or one year, Hanwang can develop an e-book reader that will satisfy the publishing community. “What screens are used for the final entry of the 'electronic schoolbags', either called e-book readers or netbooks, or tablet computers, is just a concept. The key is market recognition.” Wang Bangjiang believes that e-book readers Into the classroom, can not be separated from the government's promotion.

The e-book reader "Upper Brother", which occupies the southern site, has already "quietly" landed and wants to fight a battle in Normandy in order to seize the high ground in the student market.

As early as last year, Dr. Yi developed the "Beatles Plan" with a clear goal - to lock in the student category and solve the problem of students' schoolbags. Yi Hong, Chairman of the Board of Directors Yang Hong, told reporters that they had jointly developed the “Electronic Schoolbag” project with Guangdong Publishing Group Digital Publishing Co., Ltd. and Beijing Renjiao Hope Network Information Technology Co., Ltd. The project is not a learning machine, an e-book reader and a notebook computer that are generally used in education, but is a comprehensive system of new mobile basic education services built using modern information technology and education technology. With "content + terminal + platform" as the construction model, we provide teachers, students with standardized, personalized and interactive mobile education and teaching solutions to realize the concept of "Education is everywhere and learning anywhere, anytime." In addition, Dr. Yi's products also took the lead in reducing the price of e-readers to less than a thousand dollars.

Although Yi Zhi is interested in thousands of miles, he has to start with one step. There are quite a few difficult problems. "'Electronic schoolbag' is a big market, but it is not easy to do." Yang Hong said with some helplessness. "We all know that the biggest profit in the publishing industry comes from textbooks. If it is promoted directly, it will even replace paper media. , will certainly not succeed. For this reason, Dr. Yi proposed a circuitous route, in the supplementary efforts to become a supplement of paper media.

Even if you are willing to bend your knees to become a supplement to the textbook, it is full of difficulties. Even market research is difficult. Either the school does not allow investigations, or the students in the survey are interested in joking, not conscientious, filling it out, and finally revoked. The smart Yang Hong changed the rigid propaganda techniques. This time, he united with the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Education and produced 1600 primary and secondary schools for the Asian Games propaganda exhibition boards. However, the LOGO of Yi Yi's e-book reader Yi Yi was printed on each board. Sign.

In addition, the "electronic schoolbag" also has problems such as whether the product is durable, whether the user accepts it in reading habits, and the price. In the United States, a book costs 20 dollars, and an e-book reader costs more than 100 dollars. And here we obviously cannot sell more than 100 yuan.

Yang Hong firmly believes that the future reader must be able to enter the student classroom. This requires manufacturers to innovate, readers than look, than price, than profit space, but should find their own market. For the current iPad, Yang Hong said that such products will not become products in the classroom. "Although I bought one iPad, I practically said that all people who come into contact with the iPad will choose to buy it. However, I still use Dr. Yi when I look at e-books. Because the iPad is too bright, and if it is multi-functional, multimedia It is very difficult to control what the students are doing with textbooks.” Yang Hong suggested that the state should establish a common platform to build a fair mechanism to put the textbooks of the People’s Education Press and Education Press on any manufacturer. Can be used.