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TechPolicy

Amazon Kindle closes flagship store on Alibaba’s Tmall, raising questions about the e-book reader’s future in China

  • Third-party merchants are still selling the popular e-book device, but only a basic Kindle edition remains available from Amazon on JD.com
  • With similar devices now available from Xiaomi, Tencent and others, netizens are questing Kindle’s future in China after Amazon closed its marketplace in 2019

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Amazon’s new Kindle Paperwhite the latest in its line of popular e-book reading devices, but official stock has run out in China, forcing consumers to turn to third-party sellers. Photo: Amazon
Coco FengandIris Deng
Amazon.com appears to be downsizing its Kindle operations in China, after it closed its marketplace for the country in 2019, having shuttered its official Kindle store on Alibaba Group Holding’s Tmall while other channels run low on stock.

The official Tmall shop for the popular line of e-book readers was no longer accessible on Tuesday. The last time Amazon had promoted the store was in June 2021 on the official Kindle account on the microblogging platform Weibo. Tmall operator Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Most items on its store on JD.com, another major Chinese e-commerce platform, were also out of stock. Only a basic Kindle edition that sells for 658 yuan (US$103) was still available. Third-party vendors were still selling other models on JD.com, Tmall and other marketplaces on Tuesday, with some selling the devices at or below Amazon’s retail price.

“[Chinese] customers can continue to purchase Kindle e-readers from offline and third-party online retailers,” an Amazon representative said on Tuesday. “There is no change to the high-quality customer service and warranty that we provide. At present, customer interest in Kindle has been high. Some models are currently out of stock in China.”

Amid fierce competition in China’s e-commerce industry, the company stopped providing seller services on Amazon.cn, but it has maintained operations in the country for businesses such as Kindle, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and allowing Chinese merchants to sell overseas.

Kindle has been a popular product in China since it launched in the country in 2013. The country has also been one of the biggest markets for the e-book reader since 2016, according to former Amazon China president Elaine Chang, who is now corporate vice-president of Greater China’s AWS operations.
More recently, however, competition has ramped up in the e-book hardware space. Several domestic companies have their own reading devices with displays from Taiwan-based E Ink, the same technology used in the Kindle. Tech giants including Xiaomi, iFlyTek, Haier, and Hisense have E Ink products, along with smaller players like Onyx International.
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