Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
The problem I see with B & N's approach is that it's not really clear that they achieved their their major goal, which is to sell more B & N stuff. The hackers who bought the NCs seem to take pride in saying that the first thing they did was to install the Kindle app!
Still, B & N may be playing the long game. I don't know that the Android developer community has given back much to B &N as a result of this, but maybe it will benefit them in the end. Amazon is likely to think B&N took the wrong approach by making the NC too open, and from a business POV, they may be right.
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The developer community gave B&N months of buzz in the tech sphere that brought credibility and brand recognition for the Nook line to a critical mass that brought in a dozen non-hackers for every rooted, re-flashed or alt-booted device: enough to actually lend value to the social features tying the N2E, at its launch, to the NCs already in circulation. "The hackers who bought the NCs" are a slim minority of B&N's e-reader sales, who can take substantial credit for the remainder. And contrary to frequent speculation that the devices themselves are a loss leader, B&N had a slim margin of profit on the NC when it released, which has only grown as component costs have fallen in inverse relation to strengthening sales.
Again, if B&N in any way orchestrated those events (I give them credit at least for striking while the iron was hot with the timing of the N2E release), they are to be congratulated.