Quote:
Originally Posted by Top100EbooksRank
Here's the Nook dilemma: Without new tablets/ereaders to sell, their ebook sales decreases.
But if they make more tablets/ereaders, they will just lose more money.
|
That's the official party line but it isn't quite accurate.
Their problem is their digital sales are dropping among the *installed* base.
If their digital revenues were flat or even declining slightly then, yes, the failure to increase their customer base would be the problem and they would need to seed the market with new hardware and/or find ways to get more app users.(Both of which they absolutely need to do anyway.)
However, year-to-year declines of 50% in a market growing by 30-40% is pretty clearly due to a lack of confidence in the platform and defections among existing customers.
While some of it is likely iPhone and iPad owners switching to iBooks, the big drop came after the conspiracy was dismantled. That suggests some of it is due to the phaseout of the Windows and Mac reader apps but I'm thinking a bigger part is due to the steady stream of bad news and speculation about Nook being sold or, worse, shut down entirely.
Add it all up and they need to do a lot more than just release new, competitive gadgets and manage inventory better; they need to rebuild confidence in the platform, release new better apps for everything out there, improve the user experience across the board, *and* release a new more desirable eink reader.
Tablets, they'd be better off paying Samsung to pre-install their reader app on their devices than spending money on trying to sell their own models. Question is, do they have enough resources to do all that in the next 6 months, in time for the xmas sales season.