Microsoft Reduces Nook To An App For $300M

http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/microsoft-reduces-nook-to-an-app-for-300m/

by mikecane • 14 years ago

5 8 14 years ago

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vetler• 14 years ago

If you’re using a Windows 8 tablet to view a college textbook via a free app, why do you need to buy any Nook hardware at all?

Well, Amazon provides a Kindle app, but they still sell boatloads of Kindles. You might not need a Nook if you've got a Windows 8 tablet, unless you want a device more suited for reading text, but chances are that you don't actually have a Windows 8 tablet.

nl• 14 years ago

This is totally backwards.

B&N doesn't make money off the hardware, they make it off the books.

Why do you think Amazon gives away the Kindle on iOS and Android?

darkxanthos• 14 years ago

There's been a nook app for iOS for quite a while. What's different here?

dan_b• 14 years ago

What happened to the B&N vs MS patent suit?

ctdonath• 14 years ago

My iPad runs iBooks, Kindle, Nook, Nook Kids, Stanza, Kobo, Bookshelf, [Google] Play Books, Overdrive, and XComics. Save for iBooks, none of their retailers would get any money from me if they were locked to their associated hardware (and of those not having associated hardware, they exist precisely because they don't).

If B&N retains the content & server rights, they just landed a major coup for just $300M. Their hardware was just a way to distribute their software.

There's this funny thing about paper books: not only does each paper book contain full content in a convenient package, it includes the reader hardware. Digital books are pure content in need of a reader; the Nook (and Kindle and ...) was just a way to get reader hardware to readers so they could read the content; as general-purpose tablets proliferate, retailer-branded special-purpose reader-tablets will fade.

But yes, B&N beware of "Embrace, Extend & Extinguish". Make sure M$ stays in the OS business, not content.

rrreese• 14 years ago

This story makes no sense.

Firstly there is a nook app already available on iOS (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nook-by-barnes-noble/id373582... ) Why isn't this version a disaster while a Windows 8 version is.

Secondly competitor Amazon has Kindle apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, even Windows Phone 7. Clearly Amazon thinks that they are in the book selling business, not the e-reader business. Surely Barnes and Noble thinks the same?

Thirdly as far as I can tell, B&N is in trouble. They are facing Amazon, and are not winning. A strategic partnership with Microsoft may help save them. Or it may not. But either way it seems like a move that has more upsides then down sides.

I'm not really sure who this guy is, or why he is so very very angry, this news doesn't seem like much of a disaster for anyone.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

I run my Nook Color with Cyanogen and the Nook app for Android. I think I may miss in-store promos or things like that, but, in turn, my browser experience is much better. And it also runs the Kindle software.

There already is Nook software for iOS and Android (and, most likely, Windows and OSX). I don't see how the heir to WP7's market share can even move the needle here.

loverobots• 14 years ago

I am trying to see what MS will get for this.

Content for it's devices (xBox, tablets, phone)? A settlement with B&N agreeing to pay something, even a penny, so the anti-Android patents aren't questioned?

Either way, it must great to pay $300 Million for 18% of something and not feel it.

Microsoft Reduces Nook To An App For $300M

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