Yesterday we reported a rumor that Barnes & Noble would be coming out with an 8 GB NOOK Tablet, likely priced at $199 to directly hit back at the Kindle Fire. That pricing has been made official today.
In addition, Barnes & Noble has reduced the NOOK Color‘s price to $169, making it quite an attractive buy for budget-conscious buyers as well. Both the NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color best the Kindle Fire by having a memory card slot to expand the 7-inch tablets’ internal memory. They also have free tech support available at any Barnes & Noble bookstore, in addition to in-store perks, like the ability to read any e-book for free for a limited amount of time. If you’re a fast reader, you can get much more than a free sample’s worth of reading done in-store.
Barnes & Noble is understandably pushing their NOOK line of e-readers and tablets pretty strongly since they are fast becoming their major source of income. B & N just had their earnings call earlier this morning. While NOOK digital sales are up, they are still offsetting continuing losses in online sales of physical products. It seems like analysts felt B & N should’ve had stronger numbers considering the recent holiday shopping season. Hopefully this latest push for the cheaper NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color works for Barnes & Noble, otherwise we may see another book retailer bite the dust.
Via The Verge
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