TOKYO (AP)

Japanese publisher Shinchosha will soon launch what it calls the country's first digital subscription magazine, an online comic regularly transmitted to mobile phones, a news report says.

Com2 will contain about 200 pages of cartoons and is geared toward mobile phones so readers in tech-savvy, comic-book-crazy Japan can keep up with their favourites on the go.

The new service will be launched Friday.

It will originally have cartoons in Japanese only, but Tokyo-based Shinchosha plans to add English and Chinese translations in the future, public broadcaster NHK said.

Subscription will cost Y350 ($A3.75) a month, and the format is also accessible through the internet on personal computers.

Shinchosha officials were not available for comment Wednesday, a Japanese national holiday.

In Japan, several mobile phone websites already offer hundreds of novels - classics, best sellers and works written especially for the mobile phone.

Shinchosha's will be the first monthly comic book which is only available online, NHK said.

Virtually all Japanese adults - as well as many young people - own a mobile phone, which are routinely used for reading email, news headlines and weather forecasts, and even taking and transmitting photographs.
22/03/2007 03:24:45 PM