(Yicai Global) Jan. 4 -- Amazon has guided buyers in China to check out third-party Kindle sellers after a media report suggested the American e-commerce giant is withdrawing from the Chinese e-book market.

Consumers can buy Kindle e-book reading devices through third-party online and offline retailers, Amazon China told Yicai Global today. 

Some Kindle models are currently sold out in China due to large demand but Amazon's customer service and warranty will not change, the Seattle-headquartered company added. 

The flagship Kindle store on Alibaba Group Holding’s e-commerce platform Tmall was closed in late October, Beijing News reported yesterday. Except for a low-end model, all other Kindle products were out of stock on JD.Com’s flagship store.

A number of Amazon China insiders had told Beijing News that the company's Kindle hardware team was laid off in November 2021, signaling an e-book market exit.

Kindle entered China in June 2013, reportedly making a profit in six months. In 2017, David Limp, senior vice president of Amazon devices and services, said that China had become the largest market for Kindle worldwide and that the market was growing at a double-digit rate every year.

But the competition has become more intense since then. One of the direct competitors is Guangzhou-based Onyx International with its e-paper tablet brand Onyx Boox. Moreover, several related mobile applications have increasingly active users, including WeRead, iReader, and QQ Read. ByteDance’s online reading app Fanqie Novel, released in April 2019, is also growing rapidly in popularity.

Editor: Emmi Laine