Silicon Valley company Amazon announces end of its Kindle story in China

Amazon’s announcement that the Kindle exit will begin in June next year follows other recent high-profile departures from China by western technology groups.

People visit a Kindle stand at a 2018 exhibition in Shanghai. Picture: ALAMY

Amazon is the latest Silicon Valley company planning to unwind some of its investments in China.

Kindle-users in China will not be able to download books from the online group’s e-bookstore from June next year, nor will retailers in the country be supplied with its Kindle electronic readers, it said on its official WeChat account yesterday (Thursday). The Kindle app will be removed from Chinese app stores by 2024.

The company said that customers would be able to continue downloading any purchased books for a year after the e-bookstore’s closure.

Amazon’s Kindle exit comes after other high-profile departures from China by western technology groups in recent months. Last week Airbnb, the property-sharing group, announced its plans to withdraw from China, citing challenges brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. It aims to serve the Chinese market by providing options for accommodation when Chinese people travel out of the country.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Picture: Paul Ellis/POOL/AFP

The Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, which started operating in China in 2014, pulled the plug on the People’s Republic last year, marking the exit of the last big American social network in China as authorities continue to tighten their control over the internet sector. It was followed by Yahoo, which stopped allowing its services to be accessible from mainland China “in recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal” environment.

Amazon did not give any reason for the exit, but said the move was part of its “adjusting focus of its operations”. In a statement, it said: “We remain committed to our customers in China. As a global business, we periodically evaluate our offerings and make adjustments, wherever we operate.

“With our portfolio of businesses in China, we will continue to innovate and invest where we can provide value to our customers.”

It clarified that its other business lines, including its cross-border e-commerce business and logistics operations, would continue to operate.

Amazon entered China almost two decades ago via a $US75 million ($103 million) deal to acquire Joyo.com, an online bookseller. It started selling its Kindle device throughout the country in 2013, quickly becoming a dominant player in the country’s ebook market. By 2017, China had become Kindle’s largest global market.

However, heightened competition from domestic rivals such as Huawei and iFlytek have caused Amazon’s market share to shrink.

Amazon is a vast technology group with interests that include groceries, internet advertising and streaming. It was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Through its Web Services division, the $US1.5 trillion business is also the world’s largest cloud computing company.

In April it unexpectedly announced its first quarterly loss since 2015 and forecast a slowdown in growth as people curtailed their online spending.

The Times