[fjtorres]

It is, indeed, looking more and more like Nook miscalculated badly with their adoption of generic ADEPT DRM alongside their ereader DRM because it puts them in a position where they are selling, at near cost, an ebook reader that doesn't need their ebookstore. This wasn't obvious when B&N faithful were buying up Nooks in droves but when the faithful market tapped out and the bad news started, the installed base was free to feed their Nooks from other commercial book vendors.

Even licensing their DRM to Adobe, which should have resulted in ebook sales to android tablet owners, simply offers an escape hatch to spooked Nook ebook owners who no longer need Nook hardware or apps to access their past purchases. Lack of lock-in makes it easy to give up on Nook and move on without much loss or regret. Good for the customer but bad for the business.

Looking at their declining sales of both hardware and content it seems like a lot of one-time Nook customers are taking their business elsewhere. Given that Kobo hadn't been bragging about big gains in the US, I suspect the spooked Nook-ers are moving to tablets, where hedging their bets is easier.