Sony Pictures Entertainment will almost triple the number of comic books it formats for viewing on cellphones in a move that will make it the No. 1 provider of popular Japanese "manga" comics for cellphones Japanese viewers pay 315 yen ($2.90) to download five manga titles a month by an artist of their choice. The marriage between cellphone technology and manga comic books, which are wildly popular across all ages in Japan, is a natural progression in a nation where people already download music, games and even novels onto their mobiles. "Manga are a Japanese institution, but viewing comics on mobile phones is an entirely different experience altogether," said Hidekazu Tanaka of Sony. Cellphone comics use a technology called Comic Surfing, developed by Tokyo-based venture firm Celsys, which takes viewers through manga stories at a carefully calculated speed and sequence. The manga frames are specially formatted to fit on tiny mobile-phone screens. Pop-up frames and vibration during action scenes add to the drama. Cellphone comics with preprogrammed sound effects are also coming soon. Japan's Nomura Research Institute estimates that manga maniacs spent an estimated 100 billion yen ($906 million) on comics in 2004.