B&N plans to continue developing NOOK tablets after all
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Barnes & Noble appears to be reversing a decision to stop making color NOOK
tablets like the NOOK HD and NOOK HD+.
The company has been offering affordable tablets with an Android-based
operating system and a focus on apps for reading digital content from the B&
N store for the past few years — but the NOOK lineup hasn’t had the same
kind of success as Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets.
In June the company announced plans to discontinue its NOOK tablet line
while continuing to produce NOOK eReaders with black and white displays. The
idea was to partner with other device makers to continue offering tablets
at retail locations. But now the company says it “intends to continue to
design and develop cutting-edge NOOK black and white and color devices.”
B&N NOOK lineup
In a conference call today, B&N officials clarified that while they may
partner with other companies to actually build upcoming color NOOK tablets,
but that B&N plans to design and develop the devices in-house.
According to the new B&N CEO Mike Mike Huseby, many people misinterpreted
what the company meant when it mentioned a possible partnership model in
June — although one has to wonder why it’s taken nearly two months to
clarify the point.
The “clarification” comes after the departure of former CEO William Lynch
… and it’s part of a footnote in the company’s latest earnings report.
Incidentally, the report contains pretty lousy news — revenues are down 20
percent from last year.
B&N places partial blame on the lack of a blockbuster book series such as
The Hunger Games or 50 Shades trilogies. But the company also clearly faces
pretty strict competition as it tries to straddle the line between offering
physical books in retail stores and digital books which can be read on
eReaders and tablets.
It’s not clear if we’ll see a new NOOK tablet this year, but the company
says at least one new NOOK device will be launched before the holiday season.
Pretty much every member of the NOOK family has received a price cut in the
past few months. That’s at least partially a response to supply and demand
— the company thought there’d be more demand, and produced an awful lot of
devices which weren’t selling very well… at least until the price drops.
But since the company appears to be cleaning out inventory of all of its
eReader and tablets, it’s hard to predict which one will be replaced with a
new model this year. My money would be on a new NOOK Simple Touch, possibly
with a higher-resolution display.
Since the company seems to have changed direction on tablets sometime in the
past two months, it seems unlikely (but still possible) that we’ll see a
new Android tablet in the next few months.
via CNET
