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Originally Posted by PatNY
The closed platform certainly didn't help, did it?
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It didn't hurt. Remember, people were buying Nooks as a cheap tablet from day 1.
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Originally Posted by PatNY
And while the B&N app is available on other platforms, people have to go out of their way to DL it...
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People also have to go "out of their way" to purchase Angry Birds. It's not an impediment.
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Originally Posted by PatNY
What I don't get is that you dismiss every suggestion by everyone on how B&N might start to at least turn the corner.
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Actually, I'm pointing out the flaws in the analyses by various posters, and recognizing that B&N has in fact executed fairly well.
In addition, many suggestions -- e.g. fire senior management, go international -- would just make things worse. Much, much worse.
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Originally Posted by PatNY
Yet you make no suggestion of your own. Are you saying they should just stick with the same old strategy and wait to die?
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Pretty much.
My guess is that the college store business will survive (for awhile, at least) and Microsoft will wind up with the Nook business, and integrate it into their mobile platform.
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Originally Posted by PatNY
Even if steps are successful in only helping them turn the corner but they eventually fail, isn't that at least the better road to take? Try some things new?
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They're already doing everything that could possibly work.
They're developing the Nook in-house. They're making a good product. Unlike the transition to online book sales, they recognized very early that ebooks would be huge, and have kept their focus. They stayed in when Sony got sidelined. They resolved their proxy fight. They had at least a year where neither Amazon nor Apple was unable to out-discount them on books. They got a huge shot in the arm from Microsoft, which probably bought them a few years. They've watched Amazon irritate customers (*cough*
1984) and publicly feud with the big publishers. They've seen Apple draw the wrath of the DOJ over agency pricing.
It's not enough.
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Originally Posted by PatNY
Maybe there is no one single error that is a "show-stopper" by itself. But if you take all their missteps and add them together, well then it may ultimately stop the show.
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If we were discussing Borders, I'd agree with you.
But ultimately, the problem here isn't a failure to execute. It's that the task itself almost certainly can't be done.
In order to succeed, they have to cannibalize their own business, damage their brand by closing stores and/or selling goods that make no sense to sell in a bookstore, and incur massive losses in creating an ebook business.
Meanwhile, their biggest competitor is actually a database company thinly disguised as an online store, which can sell whatever it wants to everyone on the planet. Its second biggest competitor sells at least $35 billion in hardware every quarter, and is happy to sell content as a loss leader.
Borders couldn't do it; UK bookstores aren't having much luck; Blockbuster can't do it; music chains like Tower didn't even try.
I salute their attempts to go down fighting, but yeah, I'm pretty sure they are roadkill.