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.

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, the reporter confirmed the news from Tencent company and the leader of the online literature industry, China Literature Group, that 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. Users can continue to use the device to read downloaded books, and the e-books and personal documents stored in the device will not be affected.

In addition, the purchased book information and balance assets in the QQ reading e-book device/pocket reading account are interoperable with the corresponding Qidian Reading App. Users can go to Qidian Reading App to log in with the same account and continue to use and read.

information shows that Pocket Reading is a multi-functional e-book reader launched by 中文 Group in 2019. In addition to e-book reading, it also has functions such as phone and text messages. It is the first e-reader in China to support operator networks.

popular e-book reading devices have been shut down one after another, making netizens sigh that "times have changed." Because as early as 2014, the large companies behind the Internet entered the book industry, which caused discussions among many people.

There are also related questions and answers on Zhihu : "Will e-books really replace paper books? Among the 579 answers, most of them were "negative speeches" for paper books at first, believing that e-books can cater to the Internet habits of most people, and sooner or later they will meet the "core needs" of reading, thus "marginalizing" paper books.

also vividly comparing: "Just like you are rushing now, from Beijing to Shanghai, you will never choose to ride a horse. "

But in the past two years, the answers to this question have increasingly shown another different trend." Paper books have their irreplaceable advantages", "E-books are difficult to read complex documents", "Classic literature must buy paper books", etc., which tends to affirm paper books and become the mainstream.

" As early as 7 or 8 years ago, I made suggestions to several major domestic e-reader manufacturers, including Tencent, and suggested that they stop this business. "About the suspension of Tencent-based e-paper book product, Zhang Yi, founder of iMedia Consulting , said in an interview with the media, "The sooner the production is, the better. The reason is very simple. In the monitoring of iMedia's consumption behavior, we found that Chinese consumers do not need e-paper book at all. "

The 19th National Reading Survey Report shows that in 2021, the contact rate of China's digital reading methods (online reading, mobile reading, e-reader reading, Pad reading, etc.) rose from 50.1% in 2013 to 79.6%.

The above survey report analyzed the contacts of various digital reading carriers and found that in 2021, 77.4% of adult citizens had read on mobile phones; 71.6% of adult citizens had read online; the proportion of people reading on electronic readers is only 27.3%; and 21.7% of people use Pads (tablets). That is to say, more consumers prefer to use mobile phones to read e-books.

"The industry has become 'cold', and there are not many participants on this track, and almost the mainstream has given up. "Zhang Yi said that in recent years, e-readers have been "offlined", especially this year, Kindle and Tencent have successively "evacuated", and the domestic e-reader market has entered a bottleneck period.

But 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.

related data It shows that since 2018, the market size of China's digital reading industry has been expanding. In 2020, the market size of the digital reading industry has reached 37.21 billion yuan, and it is expected that the market size of the digital reading industry will reach 45.39 billion yuan in 2022.

According to Luotu Technology data, the market size of the terminal products of the electronic paper market in 2021 is US$11.3 billion, and by 2025 it is expected to reach US$72.3 billion, with a five-year compound growth rate of up to 59%.

electronic paper, also known as electronic ink screen, is a display that coats electronic ink on a layer of plastic film, can be pasted on thin film transistor circuit, and controls it through a driver IC (integrated circuit) to form pixel graphics. Electronic paper has the characteristics of ultra-thin, rewritable, easy to carry, and can maintain display when power is out.

Some industry insiders believe that there are two reasons why single-function e-book devices are gradually withdrawing from the market. First, users prefer to use mobile phones to read e-books, and second, e-book devices with single-function e-book devices do not keep up with the pace of social needs and technological updates in a timely manner and cannot cater to the diversified needs of consumers.

Previously, Huawei released its first electronic paper tablet MatePad Paper, integrating its chip, Hongmeng system, stylus and other technologies; Bigme released a new inkNote, equipped with 8 million and 5 million pixel front and rear cameras; Thor launched a crowdfunding electronic paper tablet T-Paper on JD , connected to JD Reading City resources and pre-set WeChat Reading. Si Xuanyu, head of JD Digital Reading, believes that "the future of electronic readers must first break out of the limitations of ink screens. With the development of display screen technology, colorful screens can also take into account the eye protection function, and their energy consumption is getting lower and lower. In addition, users like anti-blue light, high-brush and other features, as well as some restrictions on entertainment functions, I believe that it can better meet users' needs for readers." Cheng Chao, CEO of

Zhangyue iReader, expressed a similar view. He believes that in the future, only brands that take into account high-quality content, software and hardware will have a better chance to lead domestic readers to break through.