A new report by Strategy Analytics predicts that the global consumer eBook market will more than double from $7 billion in 2013 to $16.7 billion in 2020.

This is down to factors such as more consumers accepting e-reading, more content made available through different business models and the growth of emerging markets, China in particular.

The report also notes a shift of e-reading from desktop computers to mobile, particularly smartphones and tablets. “Readers are also choosing multi-purpose tablets over dedicated e-readers as their primary eBook reading device,” said David MacQueen, executive director, apps and media.

He expects eBook reading penetration to increase from less than 10 percent of the total population in 2013 to close to 25 percent in 2020.

Wei Shi, an analyst at Strategy Analytics’ wireless media strategies division, said that a significant development in the ebook market is subscription-based services launched by platforms like Amazon, which have a model similar to how Spotify and Pandora work in the music industry.

“We expect to see subscription services gaining more momentum in the second half of this decade, and contributing to close to a fifth of the total market by 2020,” she said.