Amazon closes its Kindle store in China

Amazon has stopped supplying retailers in China with Kindle e-readers and will close the country's Kindle e-book store, Reuters reported based on a post on the company's WeChat account. As of June 30, 2023, users will no longer be able to buy digital Kindle books in China, while Amazon will remove its Kindle app from Chinese app stores a year later.

However, current customers will be able to download titles purchased in the past until June 2024, and after that, they will continue to work but without cloud backup. The move is not related to government pressure or censorship, the tech giant told Reuters. Rather, Amazon says it is changing its strategic focus. The company's other businesses in the country, such as its e-commerce, cloud and advertising services, will continue.

"We remain committed to our customers in China. As a global business, we periodically evaluate our offerings and make adjustments, wherever we operate," an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters. "With our portfolio of businesses in China, we will continue to innovate and invest where we can provide value to our customers."

Amazon is one of the few Western tech companies to have scaled back its operations in China recently. Last week, Airbnb withdrew its China listings due to a decline in business as a result of China's lengthy COVID lockdown and high costs made worse by the pandemic. However, the company's Beijing office will remain and will instead redirect its attention to outbound travellers.

Meanwhile, Yahoo withdrew its services from China in November, just a month after Microsoft-owned LinkedIn shut down the local version of its platform in the country. Both offered similar reasons, with LinkedIn citing the country's "challenging operating environment" and increased compliance requirements.