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A mobile comic is a digital comic or cartoon strip that can be purchased, downloaded, read and sometimes edited or shared with friends via mobile phones.
Increasingly the line between digital comics, animation and games is blurring and the same applies to their mobile counterparts as mobile comics become multimedia with sounds and interactivity. In 2008 IDW Publishing and Devil's Due Publishing (now Devil's Due Digital) became two of the earliest adopters of comics for mobile devices. [1] Devil's Due's initially offered mobile comics through companies such as Uclick, on their GoComics Mobile Store. [2]
Mobile comic content has until recently been miniaturized or adapted versions of established branded comic content. With the rise of file sharing and piracy it has been increasingly hard for publishers to control money leakage from digital/mobile comics and as such publishers (especially traditional Japanese Manga houses) have shied away from licensing digital or mobile comics.
This however, has led to the rise of user-generated (independent artists) using platforms to publish and sell their work at low cost, and (for the first time in years) do so profitably.
The challenges for mobile comics creation include:
Several mobile content providers have now developed their own mobile comics platforms, some using java-based applications which have to be downloaded to the mobile first before comics can be viewed. Others are using Multi Media Messaging and WAP subscription to deliver strips. However, there are platforms for iPhone and iPad that have been developed to distribute RSS-based webcomics for free, such as the iOS application Comic Avenue.
Initially the titles released were existing comics licensed for the new medium but new titles are emerging purely on the mobile phone. Thunder Road is the first original title for the medium, featuring artist Steven Sanders who previously worked on The Five Fists of Science . [3] [4] [5] Carnival of Souls is the first digital and motion comic book series on Blackberry's App World, written by Jazan Wild. [6] [7] The Carrier is the first original graphic novel exclusively on the iPhone, written by Evan Young. [8] Alien Revolution an eight chapter multi language comic, by Illot. [9] Mobilecomic A collection of comics. Multi language. Interactive, by Illot. [10]
First Comics is an American comic book publisher that was active from 1983 to 1991 and then from 2011 to present, known for titles like American Flagg!, Grimjack, Nexus, Badger, Dreadstar, and Jon Sable. Along with competitors like Pacific Comics and Eclipse Comics, First took early advantage of the growing direct market, attracting a number of writers and artists from DC and Marvel to produce creator-owned titles, which, as they were not subject to the Comics Code, were free to feature more mature content.
A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
Mobile content is any type of web hypertext and information content and electronic media which is viewed or used on mobile phones, like text, sound, ringtones, graphics, flash, discount offers, mobile games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid-1990s, the usage and significance of the mobile devices in everyday technological life has grown accordingly. Owners of mobile phones can now use their devices to make photo snapshots for upload, twits, mobile calendar appointments, and mostly send and receive text messages, listen to music, watch videos, take mobile pictures and make videos, use websites to redeem coupons for purchases, view and edit office documents, get driving instructions on mobile maps and so on. The use of mobile content in various areas has grown accordingly.
Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi
e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems.
Photosynth is a discontinued app and service from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern recognition components compare portions of images to create points, which are then compared to convert the image into a model. Users are able to view and generate their own models using a software tool available for download at the Photosynth website.
Sonic Jump is a 2005 vertical platform game developed by AirPlay and Sonic Team, and published by Sega for the digital distribution service Sonic Cafe, initially only available in Japan for mobile phones before being ported to iOS and Android and released in other regions in 2007. Unlike other games in the series, Sonic Jump doesn't involve running from left to right, but instead, Sonic automatically jumps up the screen, with the player needing to tilt the phone to move him from left to right. The original game's graphical style is based on the Sonic Advance series, which had ended shortly before Jump's release.
Flixster was an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies. It is currently owned by Fandango Media. The formerly independent site, allowed users to view movie trailers as well as learn about new and upcoming movies at the box office. It was originally based in San Francisco and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari on January 20, 2006. It was also the former parent company of Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010 to February 17, 2016. On February 17, 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango.
The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.
ThunderHawk is a discontinued web browser from Bitstream available for a full range of operating systems in high end and mass-market mobile phones and personal digital assistants. It is basically meant for mobile operators and original equipment manufacturers and not meant to download for normal users.
Marvel Unlimited is an American online service owned by Marvel Comics that distributes their comic books via the internet. The service launched on November 13, 2007, and now has more than 30,000 comic book issues in its archive. It is available through the Web, iOS, and Android.
qeep is a social network for mobile phones. A license-free application, qeep was first released in beta in 2006. Initially meant for Java mobile owners only, in 2011 the mobile social network launched an Android version. As of fall 2015 there is also a client for the iPhone available.
Uclick LLC was an American corporation selling "digital entertainment content" for the desktop, the web and mobile phones. Uclick operated several consumer websites, including the comic strip and editorial cartoon site GoComics and the puzzle and casual game sites ThePuzzleSociety.com and UclickGames.com.
Boomzap Entertainment is a casual games developer registered in Singapore with a virtual office environment. It was formed in 2005 and has released 50 games to date that are ported on various platforms. Boomzap has developed for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Nintendo DS, Wii, iOS, and Android. Its games are available on games portals such as Big Fish Games, Yahoo!, WildTangent, GameHouse, Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, Steam and others.
Andrews McMeel Syndication is an American content syndicate which provides syndication in print, online and on mobile devices for a number of lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and cartoons and various other content. Some of its best-known products include Dear Abby, Doonesbury, Ziggy, Garfield, Ann Coulter, Richard Roeper and News of the Weird. A subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, it is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. It was formed in 2009 and renamed in January 2017.
Iconology Inc., d/b/a ComiXology, was a cloud-based digital distribution platform for comics owned by Amazon, with over 200 million comic downloads as of September 2013. At its height it offered a selection of more than 100,000 comic books, graphic novels, and manga across Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, Windows 10, and the Internet. In 2023, the ComiXology app was officially retired and the material was made available exclusively on the Amazon Kindle app.
Graphicly was a platform for publishers which offered work flow integration, self-publishing, digital distribution, conversion, and promotion for digital content. Launched by Kevin Mann and Micah Baldwin, the website was initially a platform for digital comic books, but later added support for children's books, art books, and magazines. Graphicly accumulated more than 3,500 publishers and more than 10,000 independent creators. The website hosted an active social community, allowing creators and fans to interact directly. Graphicly shut down in May 2014, and some of its key staff moved on to fellow digital publisher Blurb.
Mobile Business Intelligence is defined as “Mobile BI is a system comprising both technical and organizational elements that present historical and/or real-time information to its users for analysis on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, to enable effective decision-making and management support, for the overall purpose of increasing firm performance.”. Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments or associated costs and incomes.
Rakuten DX is a software company specialising in no-code development platforms to build mobile apps for smartphones, tablets and web designed for enterprises and digital publishers. Headquartered in Montpellier, France, Rakuten DX is a major subsidiary of Rakuten.
The African Storybook (ASb) is a multilingual literacy initiative that works with educators and children to publish openly licensed picture storybooks for early reading in the languages of Africa. An initiative of Saide, the ASb has an interactive website that enables users to read, create, download, translate, and adapt storybooks. The initiative addresses the dire shortage of children's storybooks in African languages, crucial for children's literacy development. As of March 2023, the website had 3 800 original titles, 7 266 translations and 236 languages represented.
Library of American Comics is an American publisher of classic American comic strips collections and comic history books, founded by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell in 2007.