Amazon to shut Kindle store in China

Amazon.com will shut its Chinese e-book store next year, pulling a small but prominent business from a market where it’s failed to make major inroads against local rivals.

The e-commerce giant will discontinue the Kindle eBook store on June 30, 2023, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. It promised to continue supporting Kindle readers, or refund any device purchases made after January this year.

Amazon’s e-commerce business retreated from the country in 2019 after a decades-long struggle to chip away at the dominance of local players Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com.

Its Kindle pull-out coincides with growing regulatory pressures on both local and foreign companies that operate in China. Tencent Holdings is the distant leader in e-books in the country.

US internet firms including Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn have announced they’ll be scaling back their operations in China in recent years, citing a challenging environment.