Quote:
Originally Posted by pl001
I wouldn't call it a big gamble. It's more like their only choice. They can't realisitically expect to compete with the likes of Samsung, Dell, HP, etc, etc on a long term basis. Or even through the end of this year. Their only chance is to is to offer a different experience than the major manufacturers and capitalize on that.
Even then, their future is questionable. They are going to have to rely on their bookstore and good reading applications to survive. In my opinion anyway.
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I don't think they're trying to compete in the hardware market. What I meant is that imho, they're trying to get a lock on the selling of digital print media. They sell the Nook at a low price, making very little, and the Nook is a proprietary device that encourages the user to buy from B&N while discouraging buying from other retailers. The gamble is that if it works, they get the largest slice of the market share of digital print media. If it fails, they're basically hosed because they've put most of their eggs in one basket.
An approach that would be safer, but has a lot less potential for dominating the market would be to open the Nook up not only as a tablet, but also as a multi format reader, and sell it for a larger profit margin. It's also possible that they could make more money selling audio and video for the Nook as well, but only if it's made fully functional.
Again, this is entirely my opinion and is based only on my wildly imaginative speculation.
Az