IPad Makes Space in Japan’s Tiny Homes by Removing Bookshelves
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Yusuke Ohki’s 2,000 books were crowding out his Tokyo apartment, so he scanned them all into an Apple Inc. iPad. Six months later the 28-year-old is running a 120-person start-up doing the same thing for customers.
Japan’s cramped living conditions and the arrival of the iPad in May have spawned as many as 60 companies offering to turn paper books into e-books as publishers have been slow to provide content for new electronic readers. Japan has lagged the U.S. in introducing e-books because of a rigid pricing system, uncertainty over copyrights and early problems reproducing Japanese characters on screens, said Toshihiro Takagi, an analyst at market researcher Impress R&D in Tokyo.