Barnes & Noble Tumbles as the Book is Closed on the Nook
 

I sold my nook tablets and bought into the Amazon system. There are too many major players in the tablet world and B&N comes in last place.

Interesting reading. I note that they still intend to do their e-ink devices in house, but the tablet business is moving to a partnership model.

Doesn't really affect me at all, as Nook is not a player in Canada, but I always enjoy seeing how the wider market is going.

I wonder who the tablet manufacturer is, and how they're going to manage the transition. I suppose it depends on how quickly the tablets are selling on clearance.

So I guess we can expect a new e-ink reader then? I suppose we should have foreseen this from a lack of e-ink reader fire sales.

Since Microsoft is already invested in Barnes & Noble.... :chinscratch:

If Microsoft go down the windows 8 route......................:(

They have small and cheap Win8RT tablets starting to come out.
And the second wave of Pros will be cheaper and longer-lived.
Not out of the question.

But B&N is likely going to be aiming at deals with the second tier Android vendors. Asus, Acer, Vizio...

They used to have one with Pandigital. ;)

Pandigital was awful and why anyone would partner is beyond logic.

Yet they did, didn't they? :D

Asus wouldn't be a bad idea. I hear they have a sub-$150 7" tablet coming out. That could fill the space of the smaller Nook for a cheaper price.

The part about the retail stores: So revenues are down, but the stores are still profitable, because of higher margin items? Have heard speculation that those are non-book items, so perhaps we'll be seeing more non-book items in stores.

I really think 8/RT has great potential but it needs a lot of work to make it more consumer friendly. I like having the desktop for doing traditional PC tasks, but I hate needing the desktop to do basic configuration.

A sad situation, but not surprising. One of the worst run companies. No vision. I get an image of management using Windows Millennium edition and wondering if this internet thing is anything more than a fad.

Sounds to me like they are spinning off their tablet development to concentrate on e-readers. Am I reading this wrong?

I shudder when I look at windows 8 on a PC or laptop. It's not something I'd pick up in a tablet either. I am a longer term Apple user and the Nook HD is my first experience of Android, I doubt I'll ever be ready to try a third operating system, so if Nook went down the windows 8 route and abandoned Android then this Nook wil be my only one.