The company announced Thursday that from July 2023 Kindle users will no longer be able to purchase books online in the country.
Existing customers will be able to download pre-purchased books until June 2024.
Amazon (AMZN) It also said it would stop supplying Kindle devices to retailers
Starting Thursday.
“Amazon China’s long-term commitment to customers will not change,” the Seattle-based company said in a statement. “We have established a broad business foundation in China and will continue to innovate and invest.”
The move adds to a series of companies withdrawing from China
in the past months. Last week, Airbnb (
ABNB)
announce It will remove all of its in-state listings and focus instead on outbound travelers, saying it has incurred mounting costs exacerbated by Covid-19. Starting this summer, guests will no longer be able to make reservations in China.
Last October, LinkedIn said it would
close The local version of its platform is in China, citing a “significantly more challenging operating environment” and compliance hurdles.
The platform he owns
Microsoft (MSFT)I decided to introduce an entirely new and more local service called InJobs. The site aims to serve less as a dedicated professional networking service that allows users to share messages and posts online, and more as a traditional job portal.
Amazon first entered mainland China in 2004 with the acquisition of Joyo.com, a major online seller of books, music, and videos in the country.
Since then, it has enjoyed limited success in the broad market. In 2019, the company closed its home online marketplace in China, which means that customers are no longer able to purchase goods from Chinese sellers.
While the company has not publicly explained why, analysts noted that it has given way to local competition, led by players like
Ali Baba (Baba) And the
JD.com (Dinar).
Amazon continues to operate an online store in China that allows “outside” purchases, the company noted in its Thursday statement, as well as logistics, cloud services and advertising business.
CNN’s Xun Ding and Xu Zhang contributed to this report.
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