Amazon.cn has been working with a group of recruitment service providers to seek for talents in the mainland for Kindle, disclosed people familiar with the matter yesterday, describing the recruitment as a proof to a possible introduction of the sparkling gadget in the country.
In a statement released on July 19, 2010, the online shopping platform said that it was offering a job in Beijing, filling job description with senior manager responsible for Kindle supplier management, said one of the sources.
"In his or her position, the senior manager is expected to coordinate Chinese-language book publishers and other suppliers that provide content for Kindle," the source citing Amazon.cn as saying, "in addition, the manager will have certain rights in the negotiations over the procurement of contents and the amount purchase."
Notably, the manager is supposed to know how to deal with issues concerned with copyright, according to the source.
Such an employment, regarded as Amazon.com's efforts to beef up integration of Chinese-language contents into Kindle, will probably make a prelude to the debut of Kindle in the world's populous e-book reader market, pointed out market observers.
At present, most of the e-book readers available on Amazon.cn are made by Hanwang Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (Aigo), and Teclast Electronics Co., Ltd.
Amazon.com is sparing no efforts to expand its presence in mainland China, but a detailed timetable for the launch of Kindle is not available now, said an executive for Amazon.cn, when asked to make a comment on the aforesaid report.
The company has been paying great attention to the fast-expanding e-reading market in China and the rising enthusiasm for e-reading in the wake of 3G boom, according to the Amazon.cn executive.
The e-book reader market in China is partly agitated by the much-hyped product of Hanwang Technology, an electronics maker renowned for e-book reader, said market observers in the country. The company, which sold as many as 270,000 e-book readers in the entire 2009, expects its product sales volume to top 2 million in 2010.
(USD 1 = CNY 6.83)
