Quote:
Originally Posted by conan50
To go "glass half-full" B&N did put pressure on Amazon to up its game, improve its hardware. I still adore my nook Simple Touch, and the nook HD was a nice tablet.
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They did, but that was all in the past. With the release of the latest Nook Glowlight, it felt like B&N went from competing with Amazon to just attempting to match them. The Nook Glowlight felt like a clone of the Paperwhite without attempting to up the game in any way.
Reading through these discussions, I get the impression that B&N management is in over their heads.
The tablets were likely their first mistake. They weren't regular Android tablets with the Play store, yet B&N didn't have the ecosystem Amazon did to go their own way. I wonder where they would be if they had focused on e-readers and took more than just the DRM scheme from Fictionwise?
Too bad Microsoft isn't still a partial owner of Nook. They have the clout to set B&N's head straight and they aren't otherwise a direct competitor.
One possible way forward: Partner up with Google. Let Google merge with/consume the B&N web store and have B&N design and sell the Nook hardware, keeping the "read any book in store" feature and having the Nook booth in all their brick and mortar stores.