Kindle has been popular around the world with the concept of digitalization of books since its availability from 2007. It was launched in China for the first time in 2013 and was sold out in a few hours. Then China has become the largest sales market of this e-reader in the whole world until 2016.
The new Kindle Paperwhite was released by Amazon in October 17 2018 with equipment design improvement and a remarkable innovation of waterproofing. A launch conference facing to Chinese readers was organized in Beijing with a theme of “beyond classic”. This new e-reader has a 10% thinner and 10% lighter body. The levels of backlight are updated from 4 to 5, which will be able to enhance the brightness of screen and improve the equivalence of light distribution to increase the comfort when reading. Meanwhile, the IPX8 waterproofing is added to make the machine protected from accidental water splashing.
The four core strategies of Amazon for its implantation in China consists of the cross-border e-commerce, Amazon Kindle e-book readers and e-books, Amazon logistics operations and Amazon Cloud Computing Services (AWS). Compared with three other businesses, Amazon’s reading strategy has evidentially already won the Chinese market ahead of time. Amazon ranks at the first place in domestic digital reading market with the great sales volume not only of Kindle but also of e-books in the kindle bookstore.
Nowadays, as China has become an important part of the Kindle global market, Amazon has been launching customized Kindles. For example, in view of the unique love of light colors in Asia, Amazon released a white version of Kindle aiming to the Asian market in China in 2015. The result was that it achieved a high sale volume. The white version of Kindle was then introduced to the European and Indian markets. According to Amazon China, the sales proportion of black and white Kindle can reach 6:4, and the overall sales of Kindle was greatly improved after the white version of Kindle entered the market.
In addition, in cooperation with Migu reading which is a known e-book store and e-reading platform in China, Amazon has released a tailored Kindle X specially for Chinese customers in 2017. Users in China can purchase their books both at the Kindle e-book store which offers already more than 660 000 e-books to readers, and which of Migu’s. Therefore, the reading strategy of customization by Amazon succeed and was approved by Chinese customers.
This time, Amazon also launched two Kindle gift boxes with chinese features during the conference in Beijing. The heritage of Chinese traditional manner culture was presented by the theme of Forbidden City with a 2019 new year limited edition gift box and of Dunhuang Grottoes with a joint gift box.
Amazon is nowadays in the process of business development in China. Its four cores strategies will be focused on. The successful reading strategy can be helpful for Amazon’s positioning of differentiation and customization in terms of its market exploration in China.
