E-paper tablets end a 16-month slump in China
Online unit sales rose 8.5% in August, research firm RUNTO says, as cheap e-readers made up for a collapse in study notebooks. Sales value fell 29%.
After 16 straight months of year-on-year decline, China’s online sales of e-paper tablets are growing again. About 105,000 sold through online channels in August, up 8.5% from a year earlier, according to research firm RUNTO (洛图科技). E-paper tablets are devices with e-ink-style screens rather than LCD or OLED. The category covers e-readers, note-taking “office notebooks” and study notebooks.
E-readers drove the turn. Their unit sales rose 57.9%, lifting their share of the market to 77.0% from 52.9% a year earlier. Office notebooks slipped 4.4%. Study notebooks collapsed, down 90.4%, and their share shrank to 2.1% from 23.3%.
The growth came cheap. Sales value fell 29.0% to RMB 150 million (about US$22.4 million). The average online price of an e-reader dropped to RMB 989 (about US$148), its first time below RMB 1,000 in nearly two years, as low-priced entry models multiplied.
Xteink (阅星曈), which pushes ultra-small readers, led unit sales with 29.6%, at about RMB 288 (US$43) each. By value, iFLYTEK (科大讯飞), the leader in high-end e-paper office notebooks, came first with 30.5%.
Sources: IT之家 ITHome, 爱范儿 ifanr, 界面新闻 Jiemian
Editor: Ian Lamont
