Bad news for fans and users of the Nook, which given recent numbers is something like 4 or perhaps 5 of you. Barnes and Noble issued a statement today claiming that they would be moving away from their hardware and instead focusing on licensing their content to other devices. Said Barnes and Noble, “the company must move away from its program to engineer and build its own devices and focus more on licensing its content to other device makers.” It doesn’t get too much more definitive than that, but the surprise here is that Barnes and Noble was still pushing the device hard through the holidays and seemed to understand that having a piece of the digital business was likely their only long-term path forward, with the quickly approaching demise of the brick and mortar shop.
Barnes and Noble has been showing signs of struggling lately; transforming their once Starbucks-like atmosphere for books alone into more of a variety shop; carrying toys, increasing goods for kids and pushing more music and movies. Unfortunately their business is getting attacked on all sides; Amazon, Apple/iTunes and cheaper/faster mail order services are rapidly eating into the once-giant’s sales. With Borders falling last year it looks increasingly grim for the non-digitial/non-Amazon world.
Tablet sales unless you’re the iPad are a dangerous business, but the Kindle continues to slowly but surely pick up speed. With rumblings that the Kindle may drop Android in the future for webOS or a heavily modified internal variant, it feels like the second and really only other viable tablet may belong to Amazon. Well, I suppose there’s the Surface.
I remember the fear when publishers started heavily pushing digital from the brick and mortar shops. Retailers were initially pleased that digital sales seemed to drive business back into their stores rather than killing it; the logic seemed to be that all boats were set to rise. Unfortunately what appears more likely is that the added addition to books briefly brought people back into shops before they settled in on the convenience and simplicity of just going full digital. If I’m predicting, I suspect Barnes and Noble will limp through this Christmas, then begin the mass-closings that are unfortunately becoming more and more common among retail shops. Will some big chain please emerge so these empty shops can be repurposed?
