barnes & noble

Microsoft deal allows B&N to go toe-to-toe with Amazon and Apple

In the last couple of years Barnes & Noble has made some big inroads into the e-book market, cutting into Amazon's huge lead. As it stands, Amazon still has about 60 percent of the e-book pie, Barnes & Noble has around 25 percent, and Apple sits at around 15 percent, with smaller players like Sony, Google, and Kobo left to fight over the crumbs. Of course, those numbers are just estimates, and depending on who you talk to, Amazon's share might actually be closer to 65 percent.

While a strong second place is not a bad position to be in, the problem for Barnes & Noble has been how much it cost to get there and how much it's going to cost to pick up more market share from Amazon and Apple, which has steadily ramped up its iBooks digital reading platform and recently launched a major digital textbook initiative.… Read more

Barnes & Noble shares soar on Microsoft deal

Barnes & Noble's shares are skyrocketing today following its announcement of a strategic partnership with Microsoft.

The company's stock soared in early trading to $26, nearly doubling last week's closing price of $13.68. Since then, investors have started to cool, though not by much: as of this writing, the company's shares are up 63 percent to $22.29.

Under the terms of their partnership, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble will own part of a new company, currently known as Newco until a final name can be determined. Microsoft gave Barnes & Noble $300 million for … Read more

Could Microsoft-B&N deal foretell Windows 8-powered Nook?

Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have settled their patent dispute and are forming a new venture to focus on e-reading and the education market.

The pair today announced the formation of NewCo, which will include Barnes & Noble's digital and college businesses. NewCo will create a Nook e-reading application for Windows 8, as well.

Barnes and Noble will own 82.4 percent of the new subsidiary, and Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in the still-to-be-named NewCo and hold a 17.6 stake in the company. (None of Microsoft's employees will be moving to the new subsidiary, … Read more

Barnes & Noble, Microsoft ink $300M deal on e-reading

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft at one time couldn't get along. Now, they're partners.

The companies announced today that Microsoft has invested $300 million into a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, known as Newco until the company can come up with a name. The $300 million investment will give Microsoft a 17.6 percent equity stake in the firm. Barnes & Noble, which assumed a $1.7 billion valuation on the subsidiary, will retain 82.4 percent ownership.

Newco will combine Barnes & Noble's digital and college businesses, meaning the retailer's Nook operations and its Nook … Read more

Nook Simple Touch e-reader drops to $79 if you use MasterCard

Barnes & Noble hasn't officially dropped the price of its $99 Nook Simple Touch e-reader, but you can save $20 until March 18 if you buy it with a MasterCard. The deal is available at all Barnes & Noble's stores nationwide and online at BN.com and also applies to the Nook Color, which can be had for $149.

The Nook Simple Touch is an e-ink e-reader that competes with Amazon's Kindle Touch, which starts at $99 for the ad-supported model. Both products have received Editors' Choice awards from CNET. Amazon sells the standard, non-touch-screen version of … Read more

B&N begins in-store Nook Tablet memory reallocation program

One of our biggest disappointments with Barnes & Noble's original 16GB Nook Tablet was that while it was ostensibly twice as capacious as the 8GB Kindle Fire only 1GB of its internal memory was accessible for side-loaded user content. So, unless you invested in a microSD expansion card, you couldn't drag and drop a lot of music and movies for those times where streaming Netflix or Pandora wouldn't cut cut it, such as when you're on a long flight.

Now Barnes & Noble is giving users the option of reallocating the memory partition to leave room … Read more

One-third of U.S. adults will own a tablet by 2016, says report

Tablet fever will grip more than a third of all U.S. adults by 2016, according to Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.

In a report released yesterday, Forrester upped its estimates for U.S. tablet ownership, now forecasting that 112.5 million adults, or 34 percent of the population, will own a tablet in another four years. If that prediction proves correct, it means the industry will sell almost 293 million tablets in the six years from 2010 to 2016.

Europe is also getting into the act.

Forrester expects 105.7 million tablet users to surface in the EU-7 by … Read more

Twitter restores popular features to its iPhone, Android apps

Twitter has again tweaked its iPhone and Android apps, reviving a few "high-demand" features that were jettisoned from the previous versions, as described yesterday in Twitter's official blog.

Both apps have brought back the swipe shortcut. Swiping a tweet in your timeline now displays the toolbar of icons that let you reply to, retweet, share, or view the tweeter's profile all without having to exit the timeline.

And both versions have added a new alert to the "Find Friends" feature. Now when you tap on the feature at the bottom of the Discover tab, … Read more

Is the 8GB Nook Tablet worth your $200?

There's a new line in the sand drawn for 7-inch tablet pricing, and that number is $199.

Barnes & Noble and Amazon were already locked in a fierce rivalry in the "bargain tablet" space with the $249 Nook Tablet and the $199 Kindle Fire. Barnes & Noble delivered better specs for that $50 premium (double the RAM, double the storage, and a microSD expansion slot). But now B&N has removed the price difference between the two products by releasing a new step-down Nook Tablet that levels the playing field on both specs--halving the internal storage … Read more