In the last few days of 2021, the once brilliant BlackBerry erased its last mark in the mobile phone circle, and at the beginning of 2022, we may see the Amazon Kindle, which is ridiculed as a "bubble noodle artifact", leave the Chinese market. A few days ago, kindle has undergone some changes in the domestic market, and there has been a large-scale shortage of goods in the Kindle Jingdong self-operated flagship store, and only one entry-level model priced at 658 yuan is on sale.
Coupled with the closure of the Kindle Tmall official flagship store on October 22 last year, and the Amazon China official website, which has only e-books left for self-operated goods, Kindle has only this one product in the official channel so far. For a time, the Network Rumors that the Kindle will withdraw from the Chinese market, and there are also rumors that the Kindle business group in China has been abolished.
However, in Amazon's response to the relevant media, it is conclusive to attribute the problem of Kindle out-of-stock to the supply chain, and said, "We are committed to serving Chinese consumers, consumers can purchase Kindle devices through third-party online and offline retailers, and the high-quality customer service and warranty services provided by Amazon will not change." The Kindle e-book reader is popular with consumers, and some models are currently sold out in the Chinese market." The customer service of the Kindle Jingdong self-operated flagship store responded that the shortage is because the manufacturer is out of stock now, it is out of stock rather than off the shelves, and when there is a stock, it needs to wait for further notice.
Although it is well known that the global semiconductor industry is tight in production capacity in the current situation that the epidemic has not fully subsided, so it is not impossible to cause the Kindle to be out of stock, but a very interesting question is, why does the outside world think that the Kindle's days in the domestic market are counting down before the official statement is made? There is no doubt that this is because with the emergence of a large number of similar products, the Kindle as the sign and symbol of the electric paper book has lagged behind in terms of sales.
After buying it, I found that the Kindle could only read books, which actually explained the important reason for its poor market performance. Since its birth in 2007, Kindle has only been doing the same thing, that is, to bring users an immersive reading experience comparable to paper books, but success is also Xiao He, failure is also Xiao He, focus is the secret of Kindle's previous success, but also a major driver of its gradual decline.
Unlike other consumer electronics, the Function of the Kindle is actually very single, that is, Jobs said that "there is only one function of electronic products." In addition to the metal material, full-fit screen, physical page turning key, and a stronger Freescale processor, the latest generation of Kindle Oasis and the previous Kindle Paperwhite in fact there is no essential difference in experience, and the previous Kindle page turning content slow, do not support epub Problems still exist today, and even time seems to be stuck on the Kindle.
In the days when the Kindle was a big hit, all this could be described as "classic never out of date", but when it began to decline, this kind of focus became inflexible. However, it may not be that Amazon does not want to bring new elements to the Kindle, but unfortunately, the ink screen itself, which brings the Kindle a paper book experience, is too slow to advance technology. Technical conservatism, coupled with the business model of products like Amazon, has undoubtedly accelerated the fall of the Kindle.
The business model adopted by Kindle is actually to rely on the back-end e-book sales to make profits, rather than relying on Kindle's hardware itself to make money, so in the case of insufficient power to update its products, it also leads to a relatively low frequency of user replacement. Because the frequency of replacement is low, and the Kindle uses a closed ecology similar to Apple, it also directly makes the Kindle embark on the road of hardware premium. If there were no other similar products, perhaps everything would still work.
However, the more cost-effective and more open Android system of the e-paper book products have made the Advantages of the Kindle continue to be reduced, coupled with Amazon itself also provides iOS and Android versions of the Kindle APP, making its huge library resources no longer a Kindle patent. Therefore, in addition to loyal users, in front of many consumers, the competitiveness of the Kindle is lagging behind other e-paper book products.
Coupled with the fact that the key to making the Kindle no longer glorious is that the act of "reading" itself is also declining. Jobs once mocked the Kindle that year, "This is a product with no hope, because there will be fewer and fewer people reading books in the future", which is undoubtedly a sharp point to the problem. Presumably, there is a passage that many friends have heard, that is, why many people in the foreign subway are reading books, but many people on the Chinese subway are playing with mobile phones? The answer is that the mobile phone signal on the Chinese subway is very good, while the subway in foreign countries has no signal.
Before the full popularity of smartphones, reading in many people's daily leisure time is still a very important option, because at that time, in addition to TV series, movies, games, it is necessary to count reading is a tool for low-cost timemaking. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were still Han Han and Guo Jingming, as well as the new martial arts of the mainland with the "Legend of The Ancient And Modern" as the garden, but these existed because there was still a considerable number of readers in China at that time who had such a demand. In such a market environment, the paper-like gentle visual effects brought by the ultra-long battery life, night backlighting, and ink screen also make the Kindle, which is more fashionable than paper books, have a unique experience.
However, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, there was no new "Han Han" appearing, but instead "Li Ziqi", "Li Jiaqi", and "Feng Timo". In the era of mobile Internet led by smart phones, cultural fast moving consumer goods such as online texts, mobile games, and short videos have soared, while reading, especially traditional serious reading, such as advocating a return to classic and ideological reading, has shown a trend that is incompatible with the rhythm of social life. Nowadays, more users' leisure time shows a trend of fragmentation, so that the "stitching monster" such as knowledge short videos has been born, and consumers are pursuing immediate and significant results, just like injecting adrenalines that require immediate results.
But the carrier that can provide such an instant stimulus is online text, short videos, but not the serious literature carried by paper books, so this naturally makes the Kindle, which provides a reading experience comparable to paper books, go into decline. Of course, no matter which era there is no shortage of users who love to read, if there is no competition for a large number of similar products of electronic paper books, Kindle may still exist as a leader in this track, but unfortunately there is no "if" in the world.
What's more, Kindle's withdrawal from the Chinese market is also a pain for Amazon, after all, in the domestic market, Amazon's library is almost unique. For readers who pursue a pure experience, even if they do not use Kindle, they will often register an Amazon account to download the Kindle APP, as long as the use experience of the Kindle APP is good enough, e-books can not be sold.