Amazon Not Pulling Out Kindle From China: maintenance services remain unchanged, some models sold out
On January 4, “Kindle or withdraw from the Chinese market” ranked first in the hot search. The reason was that some netizens discovered that the official self-operated Kindle was out of stock on a large scale, and then some netizens said that the e-book mall would also be closed in the future, triggering discussions that Kindle is about to withdraw from the Chinese market.
Amazon officially told CBN: We are committed to serving Chinese consumers. Consumers can purchase Kindle devices through third-party online and offline retailers. The high-quality customer service and warranty service provided by Amazon will not change. Kindle e-book readers are popular among consumers, and some models are currently sold out in the Chinese market. The reporter found out that the Kindle is currently out of stock on Amazon’s official website, while the Kindle Jingdong In the self-operated flagship store, both the Kindle Classic and Kindle Premium Editions are out of stock, but many Kindle Youth Editions are still in stock.
In this regard, the customer service of Kindle Jingdong’s self-operated flagship store told reporters, “I have not received any news about this (withdrawal from the Chinese market).” Regarding the issue of out of stock, the customer service said that “I don’t know the specific arrival time. Generally, it will be out of stock at the end of the year.” Once the news came out, there was a lot of discussion about the use of Kindle. Some netizens asked how to back up and synchronize books, and some netizens ridiculed that “the biggest function of Kindle is instant noodle cover”, and some netizens lamented that the Kindle has gone from being a popular product among Chinese users to now being speculated to withdraw from China.
Kindle entered China on June 7, 2013, and six months after entering China, it was reported that Kindle had already become profitable in China. Amazon has also repeatedly launched exclusive readers for Chinese readers. For example, in 2017, Kindle and Migu jointly launched the Kindle+Migu e-reader. David Limp, then senior vice president of Amazon Devices, said that China has become the world’s largest market for Kindle, and it is growing at a double-digit rate every year. When Amazon launched a new color e-reader in 2019, it customized the smoke purple and jade green colors for Chinese readers. However, in the past two years, Kindle has become less popular.
Foreign analysts said that Kindle is no longer popular in China, firstly from the rise of competitors. In terms of readers, there is Onyx Boox. In terms of e-reading apps, the active users of WeChat reading, iReader, and QQ reading are all higher than those of the Kindle App. At the same time, ByteDance launched its online novel product Tomato Free Novel in April 2019, and its user scale is also growing rapidly. In terms of physical books, the emergence of second-hand book trading platforms such as Dajiayu has reduced the cost of buying books by refurbishing second-hand books and has also diverted some consumers who love to read books.
Secondly, the lack of popularity of e-readers is also related to the reading habits of Chinese readers. According to foreign analysts, Chinese readers can be divided into two categories: one type of reader regard reading as a kind of entertainment. They only read novels or various popular online literature. Readers usually read on iReader or QQ, but do not Buy e-readers because of such novels. Another large group of readers mainly read non-network fiction books, and these readers still take the purchase of physical books as their main reading habit. Because physical books are easier to mark, take notes and collect. And when you buy a physical book in a bookstore, you can preview the general content of the book, while e-books cannot.
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