In the past few days, the news of "Kindle withdrawing from the Chinese market" has attracted much attention.

Amazon responded that “consumers can buy Kindle devices through third-party online and offline retailers. Kindle e-book readers are very popular among consumers, and some models are currently sold out in the Chinese market.” “Sold out” statement It's worth thinking about whether consumers have bought out or manufacturers have cleared their stocks. There is a lot of room for imagination.

　　In any case, the weakness of the Kindle market is visible to the naked eye: the abnormal shortage of goods and the closure of online direct sales channels do not seem to be in a good situation.

In recent years, domestic digital reading has continued to grow, and the scale of users and industries have grown simultaneously. The pioneer of e-books, Kindle, has had a hard time. The reasons for this are worth pondering.

　　Analyzing from the market level, the reason is probably the "functional aggregation" of electronic consumer products-mobile phones meet almost all needs, so that consumers think that the fewer additional electronic devices, the better.

From the Kindle itself, its product optimization is also a bit problematic.

The price of Kindle's electronic mall is not cheap. Many domestic reading software are better than Kindle. The price advantage of some domestic apps is obviously stronger than that of Kindle.

The reading functions derived from these popular apps also have a stronger community atmosphere, such as mutual likes, messages and other interactions, making the process of e-reading more interesting and creating an experience that is completely absent from paper reading.

　　However, Kindle is not useless.

The Kindle is not good enough at the general reading level, but it is still very strong at the humanities, social sciences and other professional reading levels.

For many works that require in-depth reading, the Kindle store update is almost the fastest.

　　This is why the bad news about the Kindle came, and there were many regretful voices on the Internet.

For many readers, some of the advantages of Kindle in the segmented field are still irreplaceable in a short period of time, but these needs are relatively not so popular that they cannot support the entire business model of Kindle.

If one day the Kindle really disappears, we can only respect the result of the market choice, who has left the Kindle product design "left behind".

　　□Jiangcheng (media person)