Chinese hi-tech firm Hanwang Technology said yesterday it expects shipments of its e-book readers to increase 400 percent this year, as demand for the portable reading device grows both domestically and overseas.

Liu Yingjian, president of Hanwang, said the company plans to sell 2 million e-book readers this year as compared with 500,000 in 2009.

"We see great opportunities here," said the 56-year-old executive, noting that the global clamor for e-books will help boost the company's revenue from 670 million yuan last year to nearly 3 billion yuan this year.

And although domestic e-book makers like eREAD Technology Ltd and Tianjin Jinke Electronics had similar products in the domestic market several years ago, the reading public was not yet ready for portable-reading devices.

According to research firm DisplaySearch, China's e-reader sales will grow from 800,000 units in 2009 to 3 million units this year, accounting for 20 percent of global e-reader sales.

Hanwang claims to control 95 percent of China's e-book market, and 20 percent of its products were sold abroad, mainly in Russia, Italy and Spain.

According to Liu, foreign revenue will make up 40 percent of Hanwang's total revenue this year, as it provides a cheaper alternative to Amazon's popular Kindle e-book reader.

Hanwang's e-book uses the same electronic-paper display as Amazon's Kindle and also enables users to mark pages using handwriting-recognition technology.

Unlike Kindle, Hanwang's e-book does not allow users to download books wirelessly, but the company plans to link up with China Mobile - the country's largest wireless carrier - and leverage their 3G network to achieve that feat.

Guan Dai, an analyst with hi-tech research company Instat, expects China's e-book reader market to have explosive growth in the next three to four years when Chinese telecom operators finish deployment of their 3G networks and start pushing the service.

But she cautioned that rampant piracy and the lack of copyright protections will make it harder for Chinese firms to duplicate Amazon's success.

Amazon, Sony and Samsung are currently the world's top producers of e-book readers, yet none of their products are officially available in China, partly due to the lack of support from domestic telecom carriers and opposition from copyright holders.