A storm’s a brewin – The Kobo and Barnes and Noble e-Reader Situation

The Kobo Aura HD was first announced on April 15th at the London Book Fair and the company announced that it will begin rolling it out to all retail locations by April 25th. This e-Reader bypassed the companies normal product release cycle, of September and October for most of their new gadgets. So what prompted them to release a new digital reader when the Mini, Arc and Glo was just just announced late September 2012? The Answer is quite surprising. Barnes and Noble had been working with e-Ink Holdings to develop a followup to their year old Nook Simple Touch Reader with Glowlight. Close to 300,000 e-Readers were originally manufactured and earmarked for Barnes and Noble, but Kobo swooped in when the deal fell through to get a new product out the door. This is why when Kobo announced the product, vs when it ships, was very close. This entire situation puts B&N in a terrible position because their entire e-Reader product line is woefully outdated and they are having a hard time just giving them away when customers buy the Nook HD. The entire Aura HD saga is a weird one, because this is the time of year when Barnes and Noble has traditionally announced new e-Readers for the past four years. The fact that they missed their normal product release cycle for e-ink devices is quite concerning for most people in the industry. The big issue with Barnes and Noble is whats next? They missed their goal is expanding to numerous countries within one year, when they first announced it mid-last-year. The were supposed to open up more markets in Europe and never did. Nook Press was the only major thing they have launched over the course of the last five months, and is a project still lacking many core features that Amazon and Kobo both have. I am very worried about the future of Barnes and Noble. They have two major investment partners with Microsoft and Pearson, which helped them make the entire Nook empire separate from the book business. This insures that if the retail sector ever tanks, it won’t effect whats happening with their e-Readers, tablets and eBooks. The main question, is who is in charge of Nook Media, why aren’t they innovating, where are they asleep at the wheel? Why aren’t they expanding into more markets? The USA market is drying up due to the competitive nature of eBooks and e-Readers. The big reason Kobo and Amazon are successful is because they do nothing BUT expand. A storm’s a brewin – The Kobo and Barnes and Noble e-Reader Situation is a post from: E-Reader News

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