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| Nook Tablet |
Barnes & Noble did not comment on the report early Friday. One slide is titled, "Kindle Fire vs. Nook Tablet: Better Reader, Better Tablet -- Better than Kindle Fire."
The $249 pricetag matches what Barnes & Noble now charges for its Nook Color e-reader/tablet, which will reportedly be dropped in price to $199. According to a detailed comparison chart in the presentation, the 7-inch Nook Tablet, at 14.1 ounces, will be slightly lighter than the Nook Color (15.8 ounces) and the Kindle Fire (14.6 ounces).
The Kindle Fire, now on pre-order, ships Nov. 15 from Amazon, while Barnes & Noble would ship its new Nook Tablet one day later, Nov. 16, after putting demo units in stores Nov. 15, according to the documents.
In many ways, the Nook Tablet is similar to the Nook Color and Kindle Fire, including a 1,024 x 600 touchscreen.--The Nook Tablet will also have 16GB of internal storage, plus a 32GB expandable SD card, up from the Fire's and Color's 8GB of internal storage.--The Nook Tablet's processing speed, on paper, is the fastest of the three, and features a 1.2 GHz dual-core OMAP4 chip. That compares to a 1 GHz dual-core processor in the Kindle Fire and a single-core processor In the Nook Color.--According to Engadget, which managed to get its hands on some important documents, Barnes & Noble will launch its first Nook Tablet on November 16.
The Nook Tablet is almost exactly like the Nook Color with a few changes. The cost for the new Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet will be $249, which is $50 more than the Kindle Fire. However, the Nook Tablet does have twice the RAM, twice the storage, and access to over two million books, newspapers and magazines. Kindle Fire has "thousands" of books, newspapers and magazines.
Barnes & Noble will offer the Nook Tablet for pre-order on November 7, and in-store demonstrations will take place on November 15. This week the folks at Barnes & Noble have had leaked the newest addition to their NOOK family, a device by the name of NOOK Tablet, one that looks rather similar to the NOOK Color of the past but with a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor instead. This device will connect over Wi-fi only and has the same 7-inch VividView IPS display as the NOOK Color.
The current NOOK Color will be $199 in the near future while the new NOOK Tablet will be $249, this making us very much have to think about whether we want an ultra-inexpensive dual-core tablet or an undeniably inexpensive original NOOK Color.
Barnes & Noble is expected to announce a new version of the Nook Color tablet on Monday, which will compete directly against Amazon's new Kindle Fire. The Nook Color is "the reader's tablet." The Fire isn't. That's where Barnes & Noble can stay strong. The Nook Color started the e-reader-to-tablet transformation, but ultimately Barnes & Noble doesn't have the content ecosystem to compete with Amazon on anything other than e-reading.
The Nook is part of a material transformation of Barnes & Noble's business, similar to what's happening to Netflix. Barnes & Noble is a bookstore. B&N doesn't have an established MP3 store, online video store, or app store. Barnes & Noble could gain some success solely through name recognition by cobbling together existing Android services: Google's app market, Google's video store, Hulu, Netflix, and such. The Reader's Tablet
Barnes & Noble is the little guy in its fight against Amazon, but little guys can win by turning the big guys' strengths against them—and in this case, the Fire's strength is that it's a multipurpose tablet.
Keeping the focus on reading, Barnes & Noble can expand the Nook's Web and social media features, too. There's no way Barnes & Noble can match Amazon's accelerated, Flash-enabled Silk browser. Barnes & Noble's brick-and-mortar presence could help it find an affinity with other physical retailers. Keeping an eye on reading means Barnes & Noble can keep costs down. A next-generation reader's tablet doesn't have to have that level of specs, so Barnes & Noble could undercut even Amazon's loss-leader $199 price.
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