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After reading this thread: since everyone is giving their ideas about Nook, I have to say that even if Nook hadn't made the more glaring errors, it would have been very, very hard for them to succeed. The walled garden doesn't help, but reputable brands making open Android tablets like Samsung and Lenovo have also battled in this space, and not with great success. When I really think about it, other than the microSD slot (which Samsung's tablets have), I can't really think of any reason to prefer the Nook HD over the Nexus 7, which is universally recommended nowadays by Android enthusiasts. Amazon got the degree of success they have for their walled garden by aggressively pouring money into their ecosystem, money which I doubt Nook has. Where is the Nook Owner's Lending Library? The free videos you can get by paying for a membership? The daily free app? If they have these, I've never heard about it, which is then a marketing failure. The only special feature I'm aware of that Nook has is... you can look at e-books if you go into a B&N, which rather defeats one of the purposes of getting an e-reader.
Nook attracted attention in the first place because it was cheap and there was no one competing at that price in the 7" tablet sphere.
BTW, Shatzkin said something very interesting in his post: " Digital content sales were up 13.1%, but that’s alarming too. The company has sold a lot of devices since last Christmas (I don’t know, but one would expect the number of NOOK devices in the market has gone up by more than 13.1% in the past year) and last year they reported (according to Publishers Lunch) that NOOK business rose 43% during the holidays."
If he is correct, why are digital sales so anemic?
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