Amazon begins selling e-books through its China site; Kindle e-readers not sold on site, but users can download Kindle software free onto their mobile devices

Cindy Allen

BEIJING , December 13, 2012 (Bloomberg LP) – Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest e-commerce company, has started selling E-books through its China site, a week after the company announced it was doing the same in Brazil.

Users can download Kindle software for free from the China website onto their iPhone, iPad or Android devices, which allows them to read Kindle E-books on those devices, according to information on the website. The site doesn’t indicate precisely when sales of E-books began and doesn’t offer Kindle devices.

Amazon, which doesn’t supply country-specific financial data, posted a 20 percent gain in international sales in the third quarter, which included operations in Europe, China and Japan, the company said in October. China is “a great long-term opportunity for us,” Thomas Szkutak, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said in October.

Steve Frazier, Amazon’s vice president for China retail operations, and Amazon’s Kindle public relations department didn’t immediately respond to separate e-mailed requests today for comment on the China Kindle store.

For Amazon, China is “a long-term opportunity, something that we’ve been investing in for several years,” Szkutak said on the Oct. 25 conference call. “You shouldn’t be expecting high returns on invested capital in the short run, in that geography, but very exciting from a long-term perspective.”

--Edmond Lococo. Editors: John Liu, Shiyin Chen

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Edmond Lococo in Beijing at elococo@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net

* All content is copyrighted by Industry Intelligence, or the original respective author or source. You may not recirculate, redistrubte or publish the analysis and presentation included in the service without Industry Intelligence's prior written consent. Please review our terms of use.