On January 4, Kindle suddenly became a hot search on Weibo. It is reported that Kindle's Chinese hardware team was laid off last year, and the Kindle's large-scale stockout may indicate that Amazon's e-book business will withdraw from the Chinese market. However, soon the official customer service of the Kindle self-operated store responded, saying that the Kindle was simply out of stock, not off the shelves. Kindle China's official Microblog was updated as always, but there was no response to the matter.
Why is the Kindle out of stock?
Is the Kindle out of stock? Judging from the Jingdong self-operated store, in addition to the Kindle youth version, other versions are indeed in a state of inconsistency. What about the Tmall flagship store? Sorry, the Kindle Tmall flagship store closed a few months ago. Is it out of stock because the supply outstrips the supply and selling too well? According to Amazon's official data, since the end of 2016, China has become amazon's largest market for global Kindle device sales, but did not disclose specific sales. From August 2019 to August 2020, the data of Idle Fish shows that there were 400,000 Kindles sold in Idle Fish this year, and 1 for every 2 Kindles sold, it is not difficult to infer that Kindle sales in China are still hundreds of thousands.
Since the Kindle still has relatively large demand in the Chinese market, Amazon will certainly not easily let go of the largest Kindle market and the most promising digital content payment market. Although selling Kindle really doesn't make much money, Amazon mainly relies on paying users to buy e-books to make money, but without Kindle as a reading carrier, content services can not better generate revenue. So you Kindle users can put their hearts in the stomach, the current Kindle shortage of more is the upstream supply chain chip production capacity is insufficient. Affected by the epidemic in the past two years, the shortage of stocks can also be said to be very common in the technology industry.
The Kindle hasn't exited the Chinese market, but it's also becoming increasingly uncompetitive
While the Kindle is now out of stock only, the outlook for Amazon's e-book business in China also faces numerous challenges that reinforce the uncertainty of Kindle's future market in China.
One of the Kindle's challenges: tablet shock, lagging behind in the hardware product experience
According to Statista, e-readers, represented by the Kindle, peaked in sales around 2011 and have since gradually declined. Why is this happening? In fact, to a large extent, around 2011, the launch of iPad and Android tablets allowed consumers to have more large-screen devices that can take into account reading.
Of course, if you simply look at the scene of reading, then the Kindle's endurance and screen performance under strong light are incomparable to tablets, but more consumers obviously do not want to buy back the device can only read, but can do more things, tablets are better choices. Use an iPad to read a book and read a comic, isn't it fragrant?
The impact of the development of the tablet on the Kindle is an objective reality, and Amazon itself is not careful about the Product Planning of the Kindle. Although the early Kindle was equipped with crotch pulls, the tablets, mobile phones and other equipment at that time were not good, at best, it was just a matter of everyone messing up together. But in the later generations of the Updated Kindle, each generation is only a small upgrade, and many consumers do not have the desire to upgrade. Coupled with the fact that competitors in the Chinese market are extremely good at taking advantage of hardware configuration, the gap between the Hardware experience and competitors of the Kindle is getting wider and wider. Although amazon's huge e-book resources are the core competitiveness, if the Kindle itself is backward in its use experience, it will also affect the user's choice.
Kindle's challenge number two: "Free" is too appealing to users
If the impact of the tablet and large-screen mobile phone industry, hardware is not as good as industry competitors, then Amazon still has room to play to reverse the disadvantages of product hardware. Amazon's e-book business faces a greater challenge, which is how to let users pay for e-book resources. Attracting users through low-cost hardware products, and then using digital content to make profits, it seems to be a very perfect closed-loop ecology, but in the Chinese market, "free" is the main theme of e-reading.
Although Amazon can sell hundreds of thousands of Kindles per year in the Chinese market, how many new paid members can it add? Idle fish 400,000 units a year Kindle transaction volume proves that many people buy Kindle, and do not continue to consume content, many people buy the Kindle the most used scene may really be cover bubble noodles, or take advantage of the freshness to read two days of books, and then pick up the mobile phone tablet, put the Kindle aside to eat ash, and finally put on the idle fish out of the second hand (yes, I am the latter).
And users who continue to use Kindle, there are also many through a variety of free resources to read, otherwise the online Kindle e-book free resource website and tutorial search a lot of how to come? How to make more users in the Chinese market pay for e-book content is definitely something that Amazon needs to think about. So why don't users in the Chinese market love to pay for e-book resources? Really just like white prostitutes? Naturally not, mainly because there are too many ways to read e-books that do not require payment. The most vivid example is that the domestic e-book reading platform is currently full of all kinds of free reading benefits, various card sending activities, when users find that they can read books for free, what reason to pay?
According to data from iResearch mUserTracker, in March 2020, the most eye-catching performance in the mainstream APP user scale of China's mobile Internet online reading industry was the performance of Seven Cat Free Novels and Tomato Free Novels, the former of which increased by 155% in the number of independent devices per month, while the latter was launched less than a year ago, and the number of monthly independent devices was close to 20 million. It can be seen that "free" is really attractive to consumers.
Kindle's challenge number three: changes in user reading habits
In addition to the hardware experience is not competitive enough, there are more free resources in the market to bring impact, the change in user reading habits has also brought a lot of impact on the Kindle. Shortly after the release of the original Kindle, the smartphone and tablet industry began to enter a period of vigorous development, smart phones spread rapidly, mobile social, video, games, music and other Apps want to occupy the user's time, mobile phones have become the most inseparable devices for people.
Because of smartphones, people can do more things in fragmented time, such as communicating at work, playing games, or chatting with friends. Unless there is no network signal, there will be a scene where people on the subway are reading books and newspapers. Now many people will take out their mobile phones from time to time to see WeChat, brush Weibo, vibrato, even if WeChat is not found, Weibo, vibrato has just been brushed.
The time that could have been used to read books was occupied by various apps on mobile phones, and naturally there was no time to devote themselves to reading, so who would carry a Kindle when they went out? Brushing fast-paced short videos on your phone and watching other people's commentaries is much easier than reading word by word. The self-deprecation of the Kindle cover noodles is actually very helpless.
Do you need to buy a Kindle?
Probably everyone who wants to read a book will face a question, is I need to buy a Kindle? Because the Kindle itself is also cheap, many people buy it on impulse, and then find that they have no time and patience to read books, and finally cover the noodles and second-hand. As mentioned earlier, now ordinary people want to read books is not too easy, mobile phone download an App can read up, WeChat reading, NetEase snail reading and a variety of free novel Apps are too many for you to use, it seems completely unnecessary to buy Kindle. Who does the Kindle sell to?
In fact, Kindle has a clear user group. Kindle has a reading experience that is closer to paper books, can be used for more than half a month on a charge, has a huge content ecology behind it, and most importantly, it can't do anything but read books. It's because nothing can be done that Kindle can provide users with the most immersive and pure reading environment, which is exactly what those with long-term deep reading habits need.
But because the Kindle has a single function, the user group that is really suitable for the Kindle is actually only a small part, and it can even be said that it is getting less and less. How long have you not read a book? How many people around you can maintain the habit of deep reading for a long time? In the future, if the Kindle does not change, it is normal for the Kindle to sell less and less.
We need a Kindle, but not a Kindle
Think about how many times you read a book on your phone and interrupt your reading status because of WeChat's message notification? How many times have you picked up your phone and wanted to read, but you were stuck in other apps to kill time? If you want to get a quiet space to read well in a fast-paced and noisy world, then a Kindle that can only provide reading functions should be your best choice. But if you can't get rid of all kinds of social, video, and game apps, and only occasionally want to read a book, then the various reading apps on your phone can satisfy you, and buying a Kindle is really unnecessary.
We need a Kindle, but not a Kindle. Taking 10,000 steps back, the performance of Amazon's e-book business in the Chinese market will be poor in the future, and it is not impossible to eventually withdraw from the Chinese market. However, the Chinese market has never been afraid of the withdrawal of foreign giants, Chinese manufacturers will quickly seize the market to fill the gap in the industry, and consumers can still be satisfied with reading needs as always. But what I would prefer is to see more changes in the Kindle, to return to the public's topic vision, and to help everyone develop the habit of reading.