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I think that BN lost it on hardware, the store, customer service, and availability. To be honest with you, I struggle to see what BN did right.
Things that BN did right:
1) Used EPub so the Nook could be used at the library: This is good, it got some people to buy a Nook and not a Kindle but those people probably checked out more books then bought books from BN. THis only worked to make BN money when they could make a profit on the reader which might not have ever happened but sure as heck stopped when the price point dropped to $125 range.
2) Introduced the Nook Color. It worked for some people as a tablet, especially folks who know how to jailbreak it, flash it or whatever was done.
Things BN did wrong
1) Poor Customer service: Or at least not as good as Amazon.
2) Poor bookstore: They started behind Amazon in terms of number of books and never created a website that worked as well as Amazon's. I have no idea why a bookstore was never able to develop a virtual bookstore that worked.
3) SD Card: Made some people happy because they could carry more books. Downside, most of those people probably didn't buy many books from BN so BN didn't make much money off of them
4) Partitioning the drive: Pissed off people while trying to encourage people to buy from BN. Problem, they had the SD Card slot so there was still no reason to buy from BN but people were annoyed at the transparent attempt to get them to spend more at BN
5) Really late arrival in the international market
6) Tablets: Yes, the Nook Color was a first but I don't think that Amazon created the Fire as a response, I think the Fire was being built and Amazon was making sure it did what they wanted it to do before releasing it. For BN, it diverted their effort from the e-ink reader, the bookstore, and other areas that the time and money that went into the tablets should have been used. They never came close to putting out something that would compete with a full fledged tablet in the mass market.
BN was caught off guard when the Kindle did well even at a ridiculously high price point. I had a K1 so I know how expensive those things were and they sold out, many times. The K2, slightly less expensive then the K1 sold out right away and had a nice long list of people patiently waiting. There was a market for an e-reader and BN missed the opening salvo. They were playing catch up from day one and I don't think they had a long term plan on how to make it work.
Compare Amazon and the release of the Fire. Yes, BN released the Nook Color. It was a nice sort of hybrid device that worked for really basic tablet stuff but was not going to challenge the iPad or Samsung Galaxy. Amazon was working on the Fire at the time of the release. Amazon did not respond by releasing a toned down version of the Fire to challenge the Color, it saw what a lot of people saw, a device that really wasn't going to do all that great. Amazon waited, developed a Fire that was closer to being a true iPad challenger and released that. A year later, they released a true iPad challenger.
BN tablets never stood a chance because they didn't understand the market. BN e-readers didn't stand a chacne because they didn't understand the market.
BN reacted to developments, Amazon led the way or was patient in its response.
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