360buy.com Opens E-book Service Today In China

Chinese B2C e-commerce website 360buy.com launches its e-book platform later today, and the new service will be further expanded to mobile devices in the future.

However, 360buy.com revealed that it will only focus on the contents of e-book, and will not launch related terminal devices yet.

During the initial stage, 360buy.com’s e-book channel will offer over 80,000 kinds of products, covering e-books, digital journals, and multimedia e-books. The website has already inked deals with more than 200 suppliers and publishers.

The new e-book platform will become an important part of the company’s overall strategy and it plans to implement integration of resources and contents in the future. For upstream areas of the industry chain, it will cooperate with mainstream content providers, including publishing companies, copyright companies, and writers; and for downstream, it will cooperate with hardware manufacturers to synchronously launch clients for various mobile devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and handheld readers.

360buy.com will also provide a digital music service in the second half of 2012.

On December 21, 2011, another Chinese B2C Internet retailer Dangdang.com launched its e-book business. It also published related application software for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. In addition, the company will launch its hardware terminal device in the first quarter of 2012.