In recent days, a piece of news has detonated the entire Chinese Internet technology circle, which is Amazon's famous and famous technology product Kindle is going to withdraw from the Chinese market? As soon as the news came out, it triggered a hot discussion among everyone, is Amazon really going to quit? How do we see the Kindle going from boom to decline in the Chinese market?
First, the Kindle is going to withdraw from China?
IT home January 4 news, according to netizen feedback, Kindle in the Chinese mainland product line has changed, Jingdong Jingdong Kindle self-operated store suddenly appeared a large area of stock, Kindle paperwhite shows no stock, only one e-book reader is left on sale. Previously, the Kindle Taobao store had been closed.
After consulting the Jingdong customer service, the financial reporter of the phoenix network got a response that it was only the product that was out of stock instead of removing the shelves, and when there was a stock, it was necessary to wait for the notification. Beijing News Shell Financial reported that Amazon China officials responded to the matter: We are committed to serving Chinese consumers, and consumers can purchase Kindle devices through third-party online and offline retailers. The high-quality customer service and warranty services provided by Amazon will not change.
The report also mentioned that multiple sources of information within Amazon China revealed that the company's Kindle hardware team was laid off last November, and Amazon is reducing investment in the Kindle research and development department. In the Chinese market, the Kindle Taobao store has been closed for a long time, and now that there is a large-scale shortage of JD.com stores, Amazon may also be reducing its investment in the Chinese market.
According to public information, the Amazon Kindle is an e-reader designed and sold by Amazon Amazon. The first Kindle was released on November 19, 2007, and entered China on June 7, 2013.
Second, what happened to the Kindle? What to see?
To be honest, seeing this news, the biggest feeling is to quickly take out their Kindle to see, is there any electricity in the end? Feeling that I have not seriously read a book with the Kindle for a long time, as a former Kindle fan to see such a situation, I can't help but sigh and sigh, and people can't help but ask how the Kindle fell out of favor? Is it really possible for the Kindle to withdraw from China?
First of all, the Kindle's journey from boom to fall out of favor is not a matter of a day or two. Think of when the Kindle just rose, in 2007, when Amazon just launched the Kindle, in the initial stage of that smart phone, the entire market was shaken, and even many consumers lined up to buy the Kindle, remembering that they were looking for students studying in the United States to stay up late to buy themselves, and then the human flesh came back, it was rare at the time, and the Kindle was my favorite reader. At that time, he often mixed in the major Kindle forums and even became the moderator of many forums, in order to better find book resources. According to public market sources, the Kindle sold 23.2 million units in 2011 at its peak. And after the Kindle entered China, it also rose rapidly in the market, and soon by the end of 2016, China became the world's largest market for Amazon Kindle device sales. In just five years, the Kindle has sold millions of units in the Chinese market. However, since 2016, kindle is like Wang Xiao'er's New Year, one year is not as good as a year, which may be the core reason for the current Kindle's fall from favor.
Second, the reasons for the Kindle's fall from favor are varied. First, the extremely fierce market competition, from the perspective of ink screen electric paper book, Kindle is actually not a high configuration of the product, because the ink screen does not need too high refresh rate, coupled with its own function is relatively single, just reading, so as long as the relatively low configuration can meet the needs of users, so the low configuration has led to a low threshold of the market, including Founder, Shanda Literature, Patriot, Newman, Taipower, Braun and dozens of other enterprises collectively poured into the e-reader market, This makes the Kindle, both its cost performance and its own market competitiveness, gradually fall behind.
The second is the replacement of smart phones for the market, in fact, for the current reading, the advantage of Kindle is a simple e-book, but this is the demand of the pre-smart phone era, when everyone's demand for mobile electronic products is not large, so the market is more recognized with kindle's e-books, but with the development of the times, reading books is becoming easier and easier, especially the emergence of large-screen smart phones, smart phones This versatile product is unstoppable for the replacement of kindle specialized products. Many people start with e-books, but over time they will find that it seems more convenient to read books on their mobile phones.
The third is the complete replacement of short videos for leisure methods. We see that we have now entered an era of complete short videos, everyone's consumption of content has gradually changed from the traditional text consumption to the direction of video consumption, simple reading has become less and less, under the video trend of content consumption, the advantages of e-books are getting less and less.
The fourth is the strong impact of free on e-books. In fact, in addition to some of the problems we said before, there is also a problem is that the charge and free, although the Kindle itself has a lot of pirated resources, but compared to the pirated resources that can be used directly, the purchase of the Kindle itself is actually more or less problematic for the Chinese market, and now more and more people are rare and free products, and the market competitiveness of the Kindle charging products will inevitably continue to decline.
Third, will the Kindle withdraw from China altogether? From the perspective of long-term development, the possibility of The Kindle completely withdrawing from China exists, this is because on the hardware side, under the attack of smart phones and tablets, the living space of the simple Kindle e-book is being compressed to the limit, and if there is no living space, the withdrawal is also a matter of time. On the content side, the simple text reading of e-books is no longer accepted by the new reading methods of voice and video, and the content of kindle is becoming more and more unsatisfactory. Therefore, the possibility of the Kindle's withdrawal is actually quite large. However, the market for e-book readers will not decline, we have seen more and more e-book reader brands rise in recent years, especially the well-known domestic e-book reader brands are actually more and more, especially iFLYTEK, palm reading, Aragonite reading and other brands have also risen rapidly, providing more possibilities for the e-book market. At the same time, China's reading market is actually still growing, especially the space of the digital reading market is also constantly improving, in this context, Kindle even if abandoned by the market will not change the change of digital reading trends, there will be more domestic reader companies began to appear, thus further filling the market gap left by Kindle.
However, whether Kindle has withdrawn from the Chinese market or not, the change in digital reading trends has become unstoppable, and If Kindle wants to stay, it must learn how to adapt to the Chinese market.