Amazon has already stopped supplying Kindle e-readers to retailers in China on Thursday, marking another retreat by western tech giants in the world’s second largest consumer market
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) will pull Kindle e-book store out of China on June 30, 2023, which means Kindle users will no longer be able to buy online books, according to the announcement on Amazon’s Weibo account.
The e-commerce giant also said that it has stopped supplying Kindle to retailers and offered a refund for customers who purchased the device in 2022.
Although Amazon didn’t give a reason for the retreat in its announcement, China’s ministry of commerce responded that it was normal in a free market system. All types of market entities, including foreign enterprises, will adjust their product and service strategy to specific market conditions.
“Amazon China’s long-term commitment will not change,” the company said in the Weibo post. “We have established an extensive business foundation in China and will continue to innovate and invest.” It will retain a presence in China, such as logistics, cloud service, cross-border ecommerce and advertising business.
It is the latest pullback by a US tech firm from the Chinese market. Other Western giants, including LinkedIn, Yahoo and Airbnb, have also cut its China business recently.
Amazon first entered China in 2004 by acquiring Joyo.com, an e-commerce platform. In 2013, it began selling Kindle, and three years later the country became its largest market. While some media claimed that due to the rise of domestic rivals that launched their own e-readers, such as iFlytek, Huawei and Xiaomi, Amazon ceded to homegrown competition.