Comments on: Barnes and Noble Muddies Their Brand Further

By: SiteDivide

SiteDivide — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:29:57 +0000

Barnes and Noble Muddies Their Brand Further | Gear Diary http://bit.ly/bxhU6r

By: Haesslich

Haesslich — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:14:53 +0000

Is it wrong for me to say that the E60 looks like the Sony PRS-600′s fatter, WiFi-enabled cousin? Because.. it does. I don’t see enough differentiation here price-wise OR feature-wise to really compete with anyone else in the market now, even with B&N’s name behind it.

Let’s look at the competition:

1) Amazon’s Kindle 2/Kindle DX/Kindle International – three readers with 3G and tied into Amazon. Currently the major reader on the market. Prices are competitive or better at $259 than the $299 US price-point announced for the Samsung.

2) Sony PRS-600 and PRS-300. Skinnier, all-metal frames. The PRS-600 is slimmer and, while without WiFi, has the touchscreen. The PRS-300 is $199 and has no touchscreen; the PRS-600 is $299.

3) The iPad. Love it or hate it, Apple has brand recognition in consumer electronics far beyond what Samsung enjoys. For the WiFi only iPad at $499 you get 16GB, a large 10″ LCD screen, iBooks, and access to the App Store plus your existing iTunes video library. And web browsing. For more money, you also get 3G.

4) The nook. B&N’s own supposed flagship product at $259 has a color touchscreen, WiFi support, and also supports the B&N store. It also runs on Android, and has the potential to allow customization for the geeks who want to do it, while having the gimmicky color screen for people who want to use it to navigate their libraries.

So we’ve got a device more expensive than the nook or the Kindle, which is fatter than the Sony PRS-600 which also has a touchscreen, whose only advantage that is apparent is its eInk support… and it’ll be going head-to-head with the iPad for the consumers’ dollars. Plus there’s also the iRex and the Plastic Logic readers which are going B&N, IIRC…

By: Allistair Lee

Allistair Lee — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:11:36 +0000

GD: Barnes and Noble Muddies Their Brand Further http://bit.ly/bQWtMb

By: Douglas Moran

Douglas Moran — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:43:40 +0000

It’s a long-shot, out there thought, but maybe B&N is taking the “is the spaghetti done?” approach to the market: just tossing a whole lot of stuff against the wall to see what sticks. And when they find it, bang-o, they’ll concentrate on that.

It’s just a thought. But frankly, I don’t believe it for a minute. I think they’re just thrashing, trying to find a workable business model for the eBook world. They probably think that in the LCD vs. eInk debate, they’re hedging their bets but really, to me, they’re just confusing their brand. I hope they stick around, though; the market needs to the competition.

By: gous

gous — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:02:42 +0000

I’m afraid I disagree. Lets look at your statements: 1) ‘They should have gone with Kobo’. My reply: Kobo who? Even myself, stuck in an unknown city in a forgotten continent have heard of Barnes & Noble – admittedly I’m in the bookselling business. In the US those who could tell you anything about Kobo is what, 0.01%? Imagine: It’s Christmas, you’re in Walmart checking out ereaders, you’re interested in Samsung – large well known brand – and hearing that their bookstore of choice is B&N – large well known brand. A done deal. Samsung wants to sell ereaders & Kobo brings nothing to the table, at least in the USA.
2)’…there are other dance partners out there’ I’d be interested to know who they are – well-known, established brands, no?
3)’Meanwhile, Barnes and Noble needs to decide what they want’ This seems to be the heart of you argument. From my side this seems to misunderstand B&N’s strategy.It is not that different from Amazon’s really, the one big difference being that they are the content providers for other ereaders as well. Why would they do this? Here are some suggestions.a) They were never going to catch the Kindle no matter how well the nook sold initially. Amazon already had an established base of around 2.5million Kindle users before a single nook was sold.
By being the bookstore content provider of so many ereaders they (potentially) double their customer base if, per example, all the sales of those just match those of the nook, thus giving them a much better chance of hauling in Amazon.
b) B&N makes just about no profit on selling their nooks, by their own admission.
One less reason to care what ereader is used, as long as B&N is the bookstore.
c) Looking specifically at the Samsung deal, the conflict seems more apparent than real. For one the nook is only sold in-store & at BN.com. Samsung will be sold everywhere else (this is Samsung after all)! If Best Buy, Target & Walmart stock these then sales could be high, especially since I suspect that a lot of buyers might buy on name brand alone. Notice that B&N could be reaching customers that otherwise would be lost, eg those far away from a B&N store & who dislike shopping online.
d) Hedging their bets. B&N is not a hardware company & is busy forming relationships with companies that could potentially be their hardware partners in the future.

Well I’ve already talked too much & this is the opinions of someone far from the action, so take it with a bag of salt!

By: nathaniel the greatest

nathaniel the greatest — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:05:43 +0000

There is an upside to tying the E6 to the B&N store: the E6 can still use DRMed Epub from any other store including Kobo (except for Apple, that is). If the E6 were tied to Kobo, then it wouldn’t be able to read ebooks form B&N.

To put it simply, E6 is using the next gen of Adobe DRM and can still use the current gen. This was a good move.