Amazon.com Inc. It is closing its Kindle digital bookstore in China and halting sales of Kindle devices to retailers in the country in the latest retreat by an American tech company.
Amazon said Thursday that it will stop selling titles in China on its Kindle eBook shop on June 30, 2023, and that customers will no longer be able to download previously purchased books after a year. The company said it has already halted sales of the device to third-party vendors and is offering a refund to anyone who buys a Kindle in China after January 1.
The pullback is the latest for US tech giants operating in China, which has some of the world’s most stringent censorship rules and a fiercely competitive domestic technology ecosystem. Last year, Microsoft Corp. of LinkedIn shut down its social-media service in China, citing a “more challenging operating environment in China and greater compliance requirements”. The 19 lockdown in the country has added to the pain of increasing local competition.
Amazon has been retreating for years in China’s tough domestic market. In 2019, Amazon shut down its third-party online marketplace and cut seller services on its Chinese website, effectively surrendering its core online retail business to the country’s domestic e-commerce titans. Amazon said Thursday that it will continue to operate its international e-commerce business, the Amazon Global Store, in China, along with its advertising, logistics and cloud business.
“Amazon China’s long-term commitment to customers will not change,” Amazon said in a post on its WeChat social media page. “We have established an extensive business base in China and we will continue to innovate and invest.”
Although Kindle dominates the market for e-reading devices in China, the overall size of the market has retreated in recent years as smartphone and tablet technology has improved, increasing their appeal as an alternative to e-readers. Evan Lam, an analyst at tech market research firm Counterpoint Research, said there has also been increased competition from next-generation devices that combine the features of tablets and e-readers and made by domestic rivals such as Huawei Technologies Co. and iFlytech Co.
Last year, Amazon’s Kindle represented 65% of China’s e-reader market, surpassed by Xiaomi Corp. K Duokan and iReader Technology Co. K devices, which according to Counterpoint was in second place with 10% of the market. Mr Lam said e-readers represent about 7% to 8% of reading activity in China, with Kindle being the largest bookstore in China with at least 700,000 titles.
Although overall e-reader sales fell 12.5% to 2.1 million units last year, another drop is expected this year, Mr Lam said.
“It’s still a leader in this area, but it’s declining rapidly,” Mr Lam said of the Kindle.
This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed