From "reading artifact" to "covering instant noodle artifact", the popularity of Kindle in the Chinese market has not been as good as before
How do e-books face market challenges?
Our reporter Yang Ranran
The rise of domestic brands has divided up a limited market share to a certain extent, but it is not easy to get ahead.
Some industry insiders pointed out that domestic brands need to "make up lessons" in content and brand building. Only with content can they continue to increase customer stickiness; with brand power, they have bargaining power when facing terminal channels.
On January 4, some netizens broke the news that the products in the official Kindle store in China were largely out of stock, and the official Tmall Kindle store no longer existed.
For a time, the news of "Kindle may withdraw from the Chinese market" caused a thousand waves among e-book lovers, and quickly became a hot search on Weibo.
In the minds of many people, Kindle is almost synonymous with e-book readers. From entering the Chinese market in 2013, to the abnormal shortage of stock and the closure of online direct sales channels, it is reported that the Kindle hardware team has been abolished last year, Kindle The popularity of the Chinese market has been much lower than before.
And this also paved the way for the rise of domestic e-book readers, and the drama of multiple powers competing for hegemony is kicking off.
Kindle is no longer hot
In 2007, the United States Amazon launched the first Kindle e-book reader, which made waves as soon as it was launched.
Compared with physical books, e-books are convenient to carry, purchase, store, and do not require printing, so the cost is relatively low.
According to relevant statistics, Kindle currently occupies more than 60% of the global e-book reader market and is the leader in this field.
In 2013, the Kindle officially landed in the Chinese market and was once very popular, and was regarded as an essential artifact for reading and learning.
At the end of 2016, China became the largest market for Amazon's global Kindle device sales.
According to data released by Amazon China, as of June 2018, millions of Kindle e-book readers have been sold in China, and the total number of books in the Kindle China e-bookstore is nearly 700,000, an increase of nearly 10 times compared to 2013.
But in the following years, the e-book market encountered a bottleneck in growth.
Book prices have risen, and the price advantage has narrowed; the reading experience is poor; piracy diverts customers, affecting normal revenue and other problems.
At the same time, as mobile reading has fully conquered the e-reading market, and faster-paced audio-visual methods such as games, short videos, and listening software have diverted the reading crowd, consumers seem to have found more convenient alternatives.
Kindle not only faces the challenges of changes in the market environment, but its own product design that lags behind the trend of the times has also been complained by many users: the system is too closed, the refresh rate is low, the format is single, the transmission is difficult, and the resources are not abundant.
In addition, the rise of domestic products such as Hanwang, Hanlin, and Palm Reading has also seized a lot of Kindle's market share.
Under the influence of internal and external factors, the popularity of Kindle in the domestic market gradually subsided.
The transaction volume of the Kindle on the second-hand trading platform remains high, and it has even been called an "artifact of instant noodles" by consumers.
Although Amazon responded to the rumors of "exiting the Chinese market", it is still committed to serving Chinese consumers.
Kindle e-book readers are popular among consumers, and some models are currently sold out in the Chinese market.
However, Kindle's lackluster performance in the market is visible to the naked eye.
From "reading artifact" to "covering instant noodle artifact", Kindle seems to have become an embarrassing existence.
Domestic e-books challenge
Although Kindle has always dominated the Chinese e-book market, domestic manufacturers have always been trying to challenge Kindle.
In 2010, Hanwang Technology took the lead in launching its self-developed e-book reader, which shipped more than 1 million units that year.
Subsequently, dozens of companies including Founder, Patriot, Newman, Hanlin, Aragonite and other hardware manufacturers collectively flooded into the e-book market.
In recent years, some Internet giants such as Dangdang, Palm Read, Yuewen, JD.com, Xiaomi, and Xunfei have joined the battle and launched their own readers in combination with the content ecology.
According to Tianyancha data, there are currently more than 2,800 e-book-related companies in my country, and about 69% of them were established within 5 years.
From 2017 to 2019, more than 500 new companies were added.
From affordable models below 1,000 yuan to professional models below 5,000 yuan, domestic readers continue to emerge.
In terms of hardware conditions such as high-definition ink screen, printing-level look and feel, strong battery life, large memory, cold and warm colors, and UI design, domestic brands are no different from Kindle.
There are also some domestic brands that have launched readers with more powerful functions, which can take into account various roles such as e-books and office software.
Although it has not been able to shake the Kindle's status in the arena, the rise of domestic brands has divided up a limited market share to a certain extent.
The advantages of Kindle are being wiped out a little bit.
To "make up lessons" on content and brand building
According to the forecast of Zhiyan Consulting, China's e-book reader shipments will be 2.37 million units in 2020, and will increase to 2.75 million units by 2023.
Some people in the industry said that compared with other electronic products, the penetration rate of e-book readers is relatively low, but it should not be underestimated. Most of them are in-depth reading users, and the revenue of "digital reading" is very large. promotion.
This is also the reason why Internet giants such as Palm Reader and JD.com entered the e-book track.
According to the "2020 China Digital Reading Report", the number of digital reading users in China in 2020 is 494 million, a year-on-year increase of 5.56%; the overall market size of the digital reading industry is 35.16 billion, a growth rate of 21.8%.
For these Internet giants, e-books are more like a new traffic portal, locking readers' habits of reading and consuming through this platform in the future will bring high loyalty and stickiness to the content ecology, and this is exactly what Internet giants dream of.
Similar to Kindle, Internet giants have adopted a closed-loop model of "hardware + content + service".
For example, China Reading and Palm Reading have a first-mover advantage in content by virtue of their accumulated rich digital book resources; traditional book e-commerce companies such as Dangdang and JD.com choose to cooperate with digital book manufacturers to form a "content + hardware" synergy.
However, it is not easy for domestic brands to stand out.
Due to the lack of market space, low profits, and insufficient motivation for brand promotion and research and development, it is difficult to support domestic brands for continuous investment.
At the same time, the upstream hardware research and development iteration is slow, and the e-reader products are durable goods, and the frequency of user replacement is low, which also restricts the market development.
In addition, the competitors of domestic brands are not only Kindles, but also mobile phones.
Mobile phones are more portable than Kindles, and reading apps often send e-book resources and unlimited reading cards, attracting users of e-readers to switch positions.
Some people in the industry pointed out that domestic brands need to "make up lessons" in content and brand building. Only with content can they continue to increase customer stickiness; with brand power, they can have user support, and they have bargaining power when facing terminal channels.