Earlier in the week Amazon officially opened up shop in one of the world’s strongest markets, China. The company never got the agreements that it needed to start selling Kindles and hit a snafu when it came to their cloud storage technology with regulators. Today it has been announced that the entire Kindle China operation may be in jeopardy due to an investigation from various Publication Administration Technology and Digital Publishing divisions.
The Director of Digital Publishing Director of Press and Publication Administration Technology, Wang Qiang, said that “Amazon opened its Kindle ebook store operation with their license pending, but has not yet approved.” It seems Amazon opened up its store without the necessary license. Various departments say that this violates major provisions of the act and that Amazon is under investigation.
It seems when Amazon opened its ebook store in China, it applied for a license from the government but was not approved. Instead of waiting, it borrowed the operating license from one of its vendor partners Chineseall.com.
The Chinese government said that early next week they will announce their findings if Amazon is in the wrong, which could spell disaster for Amazon’s online presence in that country.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
