Reporter of the Economic Business: Du Wei Editor of the Economic Business: Wei Guanhong
Following Amazon Kindle's announcement of withdrawing from China, Tencent also decided to "evacuate" from the e-reader track.
Since September 26, many netizens have said that they have received notice that QQ reading e-book equipment/pocket reading will cease operations. On September 28, a reporter from " Daily Economic News " confirmed the news from Tencent-based company and leader in the online literature industry, China Literature Group (HK00772, stock price of HK$23.7, market value of HK$24.3 billion) (hereinafter referred to as China Literature). The company's e-reader products will cease operations of related businesses on October 26, 2022, and the equipment will not support the purchase of new books.
is backed by Qidian Literature , QQ reading QQ reading e-book device/pocket reading, when it was launched in 2017, it was very popular among users and was regarded as a powerful tool for online literature reading. But why was it abandoned by the market in just 5 years?
QQ reading e-book device/pocket reading Image source: Xianyu platform screenshot
and e-book reader , which has "paper-like reading, no eye damage, ultra-long standby", was once hailed by the outside world as one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century. It has previously attracted well-known hardware companies such as Founder , Patriot, Newman, Taiwan Telephone, Dangdang , JD , Zhangyue , Migu, and China Literature to enter the bets of reading platforms that play an important role in the domestic digital reading industry. But now, the lively scenes have long faded. Who has eroded the e-reader market?
Kindle, the successive exit of pocket reading has also refocused the public's discussion on online reading.
The world's first e-paper book that can make calls is out of service
In 2017, QQ Reading e-paper book was launched, with a similar appearance to Kindle. In 2019, the upgraded product pocket reading was released. Its appearance is similar to that of a mobile phone, equipped with an ink screen, and has added many new features, such as supporting SIM cards and 4G full network connection. It is the world's first e-reader to make calls and has both SMS functions.
Due to its massive online literary resources, the outside world once believed that this product from Tencent is a competitive work in the e-reader industry. But what is unexpected is that on October 26, both QQ reading e-book equipment and pocket reading will be stopped. The "downline notification" of China Literature shows that after the QQ reading e-book device/pocket reading is out of service, the device no longer supports new book purchases, but users can continue to use the device to read the downloaded books.
Image source: Screenshot of Yuewen Notice
Every reporter checked and saw that Tencent-based e-readers have actually been discontinued, and pocket reading has been gradually stopped from being sold in 2020. A person familiar with the electronic and paper book project of Yuewen revealed to the reporter of Meike that hardware electronic readers are relatively heavy assets and are not the main direction of Yuewen. Since the production of Pocket Reading was suspended two years ago, there has been no specific business person in charge.
"As early as 7 or 8 years ago, I made suggestions to several major domestic e-reader manufacturers. Of course, including Tencent, they suggested that they stop this business." Zhang Yi, founder of iMedia Consulting , told the reporter of Meike that he was not surprised by the suspension of Tencent-based e-paper book products. "The sooner the production is stopped, the better. The reason is very simple. In the monitoring of iMedia's consumer behavior, we found that Chinese consumers do not need e-paper book at all."
mobile phones and reading apps erode the e-reader market
traced back to the development of the domestic e-paper book market. Zhang Yi said that after 2011, the continuous entry of new players has made the industry extremely hot. At that time, it hit the pain points of other electronic hardware products with paper-like and eye-saving electronic readers, and was sought after by consumers.
hardware manufacturers and e-commerce/online literature platforms such as Founder, Patriot, Newman, Taiwan Electric, Dangdang, JD.com, Zhangyue, Migu, and Yuewen have entered the e-reader market, and domestic brands have risen strongly. But the industry has been booming for only a few years, and then it went downhill.
"Our monitoring data of consumer behavior over the years has found that consumers need a collective product, that is, a product can solve the problem of watching news and pictures, as well as videos and novels." Zhang Yi told the reporter of the Economic Journal that consumers' demand for products is very direct, and this is the embarrassment of e-readers.Mobile phones can already provide a very good reading experience, and the public does not need to carry vassal products when going out.
In Zhang Yi's view, with the popularity of smartphones, the larger screen and the improvement of various reading apps, it has eroded the market for e-readers.
The results of the 19th National National Reading Survey show that in terms of reading forms, in 2021, 45.6% of adults tend to "read a paper book" accounted for 45.6%, 30.5% of adults "read on mobile phones", 30.4% of adults "reading on electronic readers", and 7.4% of adults "listening to books". And in digital media, the average daily mobile phone contact time per person in 2021 is 101.12 minutes.
This means that in the digital reading segment, reading through mobile phones has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and even the rising star "Listening to Books" has the potential to catch up with e-readers.
"The industry has cooled down. There are not many participants on this track, and almost the mainstream has given up." Zhang Yi told the reporter of Meike that in recent years, e-readers have been "offlined", especially this year, Kindle and Tencent have successively "withdrawn", and the domestic e-reader market has entered a bottleneck period. However, Zhang Yi believes that the public's enthusiasm for digital reading is still there, the online reading market is still "online", and the scale of the industry will become larger and larger.
"2021 China Digital Reading Report" shows that in 2021, the overall scale of China's digital reading industry reached 41.57 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 18.23%. Among them, the per capita electronic reading volume is 11.58 books.
Daily Economic News
