▲ Kindle's proud ink screen. Figure/IC photo
In recent days, the news of "Kindle's withdrawal from the Chinese market" has attracted much attention. Amazon responded, "We are committed to serving Chinese consumers." Consumers can purchase Kindle devices through third-party online and offline retailers. The Kindle e-book reader is popular with consumers, and some models are currently sold out in the Chinese market. ”
This response is very skillful and does not answer the question directly. The "sold out" statement is also quite interesting, whether the consumer has bought out, or the manufacturer has cleared the warehouse, there is a lot of imagination.
In any case, the weakness of the Kindle market is visible to the naked eye: abnormal stock-outs; closing online direct sales channels; it doesn't look like the situation is a good situation; the "cover bubble noodles" network terrier is spreading, and the regular customers on second-hand platforms are all indicating that this product is losing basic demand.
▲ Netizens joked: After Kindle bought it, it was used to cover the instant noodles. Photo/social media screenshot
Paradoxically, in recent years, domestic digital reading has been growing. According to the 2020 China Digital Reading Report, the scale of China's digital reading users in 2020 was 494 million, an increase of 5.56% year-on-year; the overall size of the digital reading industry market was 35.16 billion, with a growth rate of 21.8%.
The scale of users and the scale of the industry are growing simultaneously, but the pioneer of e-books, Kindle, has a hard time, and the reason is worth pondering.
From the market level, the reason is probably the "functional aggregation" of consumer electronics - mobile phones meet almost all needs, so that consumers think that the fewer additional electronic devices, the better.
Not just Kindles, MP3s, MP4s and the like, electronic products with single functions have almost disappeared from the market. Even the tablet computers that have been on fire in recent years are not comparable to mobile phones, and the shipments of tablets in the Chinese market in 2020 basically account for only one-tenth of mobile phones.
For the single function of e-books, but to bring more than one device, it is certainly not cost-effective, electronic reading is an App thing for mobile phones. The background of this industrial development is not friendly to the Kindle.
From the Kindle itself, its product optimization is also a bit of a problem. Kindle's e-store pricing is not cheap, kindle unlimited's monthly and annual subscription services are not cost-effective, and newly published popular books are almost unusable.
At this point, many domestic reading software is better than the Kindle, and the price advantage of domestic apps such as WeChat Reading, JD Reading, and Douban Reading is significantly stronger than that of Kindle.
The reading function derived from these popular apps also has a stronger community atmosphere, such as mutual likes, messages and other interactions, and the ranking of reading time between friends, making the process of electronic reading more interesting, and also creating an experience that paper reading does not have at all.
Therefore, it is not without reason that the Kindle has become a "bubble noodle artifact" in many people. It is the changes in the e-reading market environment and The Kindle's product design that lags behind the trend of the times, and co-evolved into today's situation.
Of course, if viewed from a hardware perspective alone, in the electronic reading device, the Kindle is still the head, and the hardware design of other brands cannot be compared with it at present. But this thin hardware advantage is not enough to support the Kindle to glory, after all, people's tastes have been "spoiled" by the silky touch screen, how many people can endure the "click and wait for two seconds" ink screen?
The Kindle isn't useless, though. The Kindle is not good enough at the level of public reading, but in terms of personal experience, kindle is still very strong in the professional reading level of humanities and social sciences. For example, the two tomes published not long ago, "Cambridge History of the Song Dynasty of China (Volume I)" and "Cambridge History of the Middle Qing Dynasty of China (Volume I)", were searched all over the Internet at that time, and only the Kindle Mall had an electronic version.
There are many similar situations, many works that need to be read in depth, and the Kindle Mall update is almost the fastest. In addition, foreign language learning is also a Kindle's strength. Most apps offer English translations, but nothing else is missing. But kindles can install their own electronic dictionaries, which is tempting for learning small languages.
This is also why the news of the Kindle's bad luck has come, and there are many voices of regret on the Internet. For many readers, some of the Advantages of Kindle in the segment are still irreplaceable in a short period of time, but these needs are relatively less popular, so that they cannot support the entire business model of Kindle.
If one day the Kindle really disappears, we can only respect the results of the market choice, who let the Kindle product design "fall behind".
Contributing Writer | Jiang Cheng (Media Person)
Edit | Ding Hui
Intern | Wei Yingzi
Proofreading | Dangerous