The inexpensive, small Nook tablet that we reported on at the end of October based on various leaks was officially announced by Barnes & Noble on Wednesday morning. The seven-inch Android tablet will indeed sell for $49.99, making the it “the company’s most affordable Nook ever,” and it will include full access to the Google Play store. BN says the devices will be available in stores as of November 25 (“Black Friday”). While the device gives BN a competitor to Amazon’s cheapest Fire tablet, at the same Amazon announced their own Black Friday deals over the week leading up to […]
Tablets
Leaked Pictures Indicate Nook Has Cheap 7″ Tablet Coming Soon
Although Nook stopped making its own tablets several years ago when they partnered with Samsung — and has failed to sell those co-branded Samsung tablets in any meaningful quantities — leaked documents indicate the company is working on a new tablet to be marketed and sold under its own brand name. FCC documents obtained by various gadget blogs indicate the new device, called the Nook Tablet 7″ BNTV450, is manufactured by Chinese company Shenzhen Jingwah. It appears to be a cheap seven-inch screen Android model that could ostensibly try to compete with Amazon’s $50 Fire tablet. The new Nook Tablet 7 has the […]
Barnes & Noble Fires CEO Boire; Will Try Again
After the close of the market on Tuesday, Barnes & Noble announced that the board of directors “determined that [CEO Ron] Boire was not a good fit for the organization and that it was in the best interests of all parties for him to leave the company.” As a result, executive chairman Len Riggio will postpone his planned retirement this September “until a later date.” The undistinguished tenure of Boire lasted a little less than a year. In that time, the company failed to recover from the botched relaunch of their website and continue to lose online sales. They also failed to […]
Amazon Confirms Release of New Tablets, From Small $50 Unit to New 10.1-Inch Screen
As indicated by the WSJ and others, Amazon announced a number of new devices on Thursday morning. At the bottom end is a new $50, 7-inch Fire tablet. (If for some reason one is not enough, they will sell you a six-pack of tablets for $250.) In the middle is a revised version of their special tablet for kids. Launched last year at $150, the new Fire Kids Edition is down to $100. At the higher end are their Fire HD tablets, now thinner, larger (in the screens), and HD-er. The 8-inch display sells for $150, while the 10+-inch display goes for $230. […]
Daily Amazon: Flame Out On Tablet Sales, Interest In Radio Shack, and More
Suspicions about broad weakness in the market for new tablets were confirmed by the latest fourth quarter Tablet Tracker report from International Data Corporation. Apple already reported that iPad sales declined to 21.4 million units in the holiday quarter, still the dominant player in the market. More surprisingly, IDC says that Amazon shipped only 1.7 million Fire tablets across the line, despite refreshing their offerings last September. By IDC’s count, Amazon’s tablet shipments were down almost 70 percent from 5.8 million units in Q4 2013. Similarly, the company estimates Amazon shipped only 3.3 million tablets all year last year, down […]
The Barnes & Noble Samsung $179 Tablet Finally Arrives
Barnes & Noble’s newest tablet, saddled with the mouthful of a name Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK because of the company’s partnership with Samsung, officially launched at a presentation held at BN’s Union Square store Wednesday morning. The 7-inch tablet, which retails at $179 (after a $20 instant rebate) and weighs 9.74 ounces, includes “more than $200 in free content from the NOOK Store” such as Freakonomics, The Wanderer, and I Am Number Four; built-in 1.3-megapixel front- and 3-megapixel rear-facing cameras, and other features. As we reported in June, BN has committed to selling a minimum of 1 million co-branded […]