Barnes & Noble aims to fend off Amazon's Fire with Nook Tablet

Amazon.com's Kindle Fire has drawn a lot of media and consumer attention as the latest, and perhaps the first legitimate, contender to the iPad.

But Barnes & Noble Inc. argues that Amazon is just following its lead. Nearly a year ago, the bookseller rolled out the Nook Color, a 7-inch device that it asserts is the second bestselling tablet behind Apple Inc.'s iPad.

Now Barnes & Noble is trying to fend off Amazon with the $249 Nook Tablet, which looks the same as the $199 Nook Color but has a horsepower boost that makes it a more polished product worth considering for those who don't want to, or can't, spend $499 on an iPad.

The Nook Tablet picks up where last year's Nook Color left off but adds improved hardware with a 1-gigahertz dual-core processor and 1 gigabyte of RAM and 16 gigabytes of storage. The Nook Color, selling at the same price as the Fire, features an 800-megahertz processor, 512 megabytes of RAM and 8 gigabytes of storage.

The two Nook devices have the same display, which impressively renders Web pages, movies and TV shows from Netflix and Hulu, as well as books, comics and magazines. Both also include a built-in email app.

The Nook Tablet and Nook Color share the same body, though the two are painted in different shades of gray, and both are plenty comfortable to hold in the hand, with a mix of high-quality hard plastics and a softer rubberized back.

Like the Fire, the Barnes & Noble tablets lack cameras, 3G or 4G options, Bluetooth capabilities and other features found in higher-priced tablets such as Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab line. However, unlike the Fire, the Nook Color and Nook Tablet have microSD card slots, which allow for expandable storage.

That's a good thing because the Nook Color and Nook Tablet allow only 1 gigabyte of storage for content purchased outside Barnes & Noble's Nook Store for books and apps. The rest, or 15 gigabytes for the Nook Tablet and 7 gigabytes for the Nook Color, is reserved for items purchased from the bookseller's online store.

The Nook Tablet improves over the Nook Color with small, noticeable differences such as faster load times for apps, smoother page turns for books and a more responsive operating system.

On the hardware side, the Nook Tablet outperforms the Nook Color and the Fire, but neither Nook can match the Fire's impressive library of music, movies and TV shows to stream or download.

Sure, the Nook offers access to Netflix and Hulu for video and MOG and Grooveshark for music, but streaming from those services requires a Wi-Fi connection. And when it comes to buying content to enjoy when Wi-Fi isn't around, Barnes & Noble (unlike Amazon) has no online storefront that sells music, movies and TV shows.

Amazon's Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet Gird for Battle

Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet now seem locked in open battle.

For each company, the stakes are very different. Amazon needed to expand upon its already-successful Kindle line, which until this point had centered on a series of gray-scale e-readers, in a way that allowed it to

leverage its already-considerable presence in music and video. The result, the 7-inch Kindle Fire, places it in direct competition with other tablets on the market, including Apple’s iPad.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color, released a year ago, offered some key advantages over those original gray-scale Kindles. The release of the Kindle Fire, however, blunted that edge; the bookseller is now relying on its new Nook Tablet to establish parity, at least in customers’ eyes, with Amazon’s offerings. The Nook Tablet is priced around $50 higher than the Kindle Fire, although Barnes & Noble executives have argued their device possesses advantages in screen quality and memory capacity.

Amazon began shipping the Kindle Fire to customers Nov. 14. Barnes & Noble followed suit with the Nook Tablet Nov. 16.

The Kindle Fire features tight integration with Amazon’s existing video, music and e-book services, along with its branded Appstore for Android. The 7-inch device also leverages a purpose-built “Amazon Silk” browser that relies on the retailer’s cloud architecture to speed Web page rendering. It requires WiFi to access streaming content.

The Nook Tablet, also 7 inches, doesn’t offer its own streaming video content, instead relying on partnerships with content companies such as Netflix and Pandora. Barnes & Noble also upgraded its gray-scale Nook Simple Touch with more advanced hardware and a lower price point, placing that end of its line on a similar collision-course with Amazon’s recently upgraded gray-scale Kindle devices.

Neither Barnes & Noble nor Amazon releases sales numbers for their respective e-readers, although it’s generally assumed that the Kindle maintains a healthy market share lead over the Nook. That being said, the Nook Color managed to carve out some attention and mindshare over the past year. Trust that the two companies, through marketing and other venues, will fight tooth and nail for holiday-shopping dollars, and not only against each other, but also the other color tablets on the market. 

Barnes and Noble to open Nook Tablet $50 above Kindle Fire(Photo-Video)

Barnes & Noble Inc. this week said it will sell the new Nook Tablet at $249.00.

The Nook Tablet includes a 7-inch 1024 x 600 display, 1.2GHz Dual-Core CPU, 1GB RAM, 16GB Memory, 11.5 hours of reading time or nine hours of video viewing.

The final product will weigh at 14.1 ounces, 10 percent lighter than the Nook Color.

Pre-order sales for the Nook Tablet begin Nov. 7, with units shipping to customers around Nov. 17.

In addition, the Nook Simple Touch e-reader sells at $99.00 and the Nook Color MSRP has dropped $50 to Nook Color holds a price of $199.99.

By comparison, Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire, to be sold Nov. 15, includes a full-color 7-inch multi-touch IPS display, Dual-Core CPU, 8GB Internal Memory, Wi-Fi functionality, and up to eight hours of battery life at $199.00.

Applications include the Amazon Silk Browser, E-Mail, Amazon Instant Video, Amazon Appstore, and Amazon Cloud Drive with unlimited cloud storage for Amazon content.

Finally, each Kindle Fire will include a free month of Amazon Prime membership.

Amazon in Sept. announced new Kindle models including the Kindle at $79.00, the Kindle Touch with touch display and built-in Wi-Fi at $99.00, and the Kindle Touch 3G which adds free 3G wireless functionality at $149.00.

E-Book report: Nook is up, iPad still catching up

As the publishing industry wrapped up four days of digital talk at its annual national convention, Amazon.com's Kindle was seen as the clear, if not dominant, player in the growing e-market; Barnes & Noble's Nook was considered a pleasant surprise and Apple's iPad an underachiever. "They had a respectable launch, but we think Apple can do better," Penguin Group (USA) CEO David Shanks said this week during BookExpo America, which ended Thursday at the Jacob Javits Center.

"They still haven't moved their e-books into their iTunes store, and they can have a much better search capability in their iBookstore." "The iPad offers so many audio visual applications that reading is not given as much priority as it is in dedicated (reading only) devices like the Nook and Kindle," says literary agent Richard Curtis. More than 20 million iPads and iPad 2s have been sold over the past year, and the iBookstore is also available on more than 160 million additional devices through the iPhone and iPod. But publishers and agents say Apple is not yet the balance to Amazon.com for which they had hoped. They estimate that Apple sales are around 10 percent of the e-market, far behind the believed 60 percent to 65 percent for Amazon. Publishers and agents say e-books are at least 15 percent to 20 percent of overall sales, more than double from just a year ago. Apple spokesman Jason Roth declined to comment on any specific criticisms, but did say that the iBookstore had over 150,000 titles — an Amazon spokesman says the the Kindle store has more than 950,000 — and that more than 100 million books had been downloaded worldwide through the iBookstore. He would not say how many were downloads of free books. Selections at the iBookstore were greatly improved this year when Random House Inc., publisher of Stieg Larsson and John Grisham among others, agreed to sell through Apple after resolving differences over pricing. Brian Murray, CEO of HarperCollins Publishers, said iBookstore sales were "a little smaller than expected," but he praised the iPad as a multimedia breakthrough that enabled publishers to sell e-picture books and "enhanced" e-books that include video and sound. "There are certainly areas for improvement, as there are with every book retailer and device," he said. "But the promise of having another platform where books can be discovered is still true today. The potential is enormous." A strong No. 2 to Amazon has emerged, but it's Barnes & Noble, which launched the Nook late in 2009 to skepticism about everything from the name "Nook" to the design. David Pogue in The New York Times had mocked the Nook's "half-baked software" and called the device "an anesthetized slug." But Barnes & Noble has worked to improve the Nook and to offer different types, including a touch screen version announced this week. The company promoted the Nook relentlessly through its superstores and now has around 25 percent of e-sales, publishers say. David Young, CEO of the Hachette Book Group, said the Nook's success had "frankly astounded" him. Random House CEO Markus Dohle acknowledged he was initially "worried a bit" about the Nook, but praised Barnes & Noble for its "extraordinary accomplishment." Even the American Booksellers Association, the trade group representing independent sellers, was congratulating its longtime rival. "They've married the physical location to the e-book device in a way that is profound," says Len Vlahos, the association's chief operating officer. BookExpo America is a combination of trade show, seminar, soapbox and family reunion, with agents, authors, booksellers and publishers assembled under the Javits roof and in and out of the center's erratic Wi-Fi. The convention is also a testament to the endless and surprising variety of publishers, where a booth this week for the Lebanese Ministry of Culture stood across the aisle from a display of American Girl products. Among the "buzz" books were the novels "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach and Erin Morgenstern's "The Night Circus." Buzz words included "petting zoo," meaning an in-store selection of e-book devices that customers are allowed to handle; and "showroom," the latest pitch for the value of a physical, "bricks and mortar" store. Membership in the booksellers association has increased for two straight years after decades of decline, and independents are encouraged by the Nook because they think it demonstrates that old-fashioned bookstores, "showrooms," remain the best way to promote books. With Borders closing stores and Barnes & Noble committing more space to the Nook, publishers are looking to independents to ensure the tradition of spontaneous discovery, a passer-by spotting a new release in the window or a browser finding an old paperback on a shelf. "Independents are going to be OK, I genuinely feel," says David Young of Hachette. "We care about the all physical stores, and that includes the chains, because they're our showrooms. It's a good term and one at the moment you can't replicate online." Independents are not ignoring e-books. Around 250 have signed with Google and its e-book store, which opened last December and which Vlahos of the booksellers association praised as a valuable addition. Synonymous with Internet searching, Google has positioned itself as a bridge between different kinds of devices and retailers, a peacemaker on the e-battlefield. Some publishers and booksellers would like more noise, though. Brian Murray of HarperCollins says he's disappointed with Google sales, which even Google acknowledges have been small so far. At an information session hosted by Google, booksellers questioned the company's aversion to advertising. Google's director of strategic partnerships, Tom Turvey, says that spending "lots and lots" of money on ads was unlikely. But he noted that the store was relatively new and was confident that sales would increase as more readers learned about it, whether online, through an e-book device or through the bookstores promoting it. Michael Norris of Simba criticized Google for not having "thought out their e-book strategy all the way through." But Turvey said the Google store was evolving as planned. "My entire team comes from the book business," says Turvey, a former director of online sales and marketing at HarperCollins. "We understand the issues extremely well."