Barnes & Noble Launches New "Nooks"

Barnes & Noble has announced the latest generation of its “Nook” e-reader and tablet line. New Nook

The new Nook Tablet costs $249 and features several hardware upgrades over its predecessor including a dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. It's on sale now for pre-order and will be available in stores the week of Nov. 14th, 2011.

Barnes & Noble says the Nook Tablet is the company’s fastest and lightest tablet, and also offers access to popular movies, TV shows and music from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora and others, plus a collection of high-quality apps, fast Web browsing and email. New Nooks

The Nook Tablet is now available for pre-order at www.nook.com and at Barnes & Noble stores.

The Nook “Color” e-reader now is priced at $199. The new Nook “Simple” is priced at $99, without ads.

New Nook, New Positioning?

Are there implications for Barnes & Noble as it prepares to launch its next generation of Nook e-readers? 

Some might say so, especially as Amazon’s new line of Kindles, especially the Fire, seem to be getting traction.

Up to this point, women have tended to be bigger buyers of e-readers than males. Also, Barnes & Noble is emphasizing more toys and goods for children in its retail stores.

The logical implication might be that Nook gets positioned as a device especially useful for families with children.

In the United States,  as recently as August 2011, tablet and eReader owners tended to be male and on the younger side. But according to Nielsen,  this is no longer the case.

In the third quarter of  2010, for example, 62 percent of tablet owners were under the age of 34 and only 10 percent were over the age of 55. 

By the second quarter of  2011, only 46 percent of tablet owners were under the age of 34 and the percentage of those over 55 had increased to 19 percent.

Looking at the data by gender underlines key changes in the e-reader category. Some 61 percent of all e-reader owners are now female, compared to 46 percent in the third quarter of  2010.



Smart phone owners are now evenly split between male and female and tablets remain primarily male. E-reader demographics

Nook Color will get Froyo update, become a "real tablet"

Barnes & Noble plans to introduce an Android-powered color e-reader, the Nook Color. The device will have an seven-inch screen, as did the earlier device running Android 2.1.

The Android 2.2 update for the device which should give users access to the Android Marketplace as well as a more typical home screen, potentially making it one of the cheapest Android tablets on the market.

If the device retails for about $250, it would undercut pricing of somewhat similar devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

If you had any doubt that parts of the e-reader market would overlap with the tablet PC market, this move should eliminate those doubts.

Nook Color will get Froyo update, become a "real tablet"

Did The iPad Preemptively Kill The US Tablet Market Like The Kindle & Nook Killed Other Ebook Readers?

The U.S. market for ebook readers is basically a choice between the Kindle or the Nook.

Can you can blame the Apple iPad for that state of affairs? Or is it the business arrangements? Ebook readers, after all, are only as valuable as the selection of available content, pricing and delivery of that content.

It might be more difficult than most of us realize to get all those elements, plus an attractive user interface and device pricing, into alignment.

Did The iPad Preemptively Kill The US Tablet Market Like The Kindle & Nook Killed Other Ebook Readers?