E-commerce major Flipkart has discontinued the sale of e-books (electronic books) on its website. Customers will no longer be able to purchase e-books on Flipkart; however, their previous purchases will remain intact.
Flipkart has transferred its e-library to Kobo, the e-book platform produced by Toronto-based Kobo Inc.
“The Indian book market is overwhelmingly dominated by physical books and this is a market that is growing at a fast clip. Flipkart will continue to be a leading player in the overall books market in India. In its overall strategy for books, Flipkart does not see the e-books service as a strategic fit and hence the decision of transitioning the ebooks service to Kobo,” the e-tailer said in a statement.
Flipkart started its journey as an online retailer of books in 2007; it later on added other products such as mobile phones, laptops, apparel and furniture. It began selling e-books in 2012 as part of its digital store Flyte, which also stopped selling music in 2013.
As per industry estimates, for most publishers in India, ebook sales are between 2% and 5% of business, miniscule compared to the 30% in mature markets where ebooks are mostly read on ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle.
Interestingly, Flipkart’s move to shut its e-book service comes at a time when Amazon, leading online book seller in India, has recently announced the launch of Kindle unlimited, a subscription service that allows its users to pick and read books from over a million Kindle books at a monthly fee of USD3 (INR 199).
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