Guess who is coming out with another new e-reader? Barnes and Noble, of course. Looks like real competition for the Kindle. It's a little smaller with the same screen size and a half an ounce lighter. The new nook is a little thicker than the kindle but maybe that's a good thing based on RUMORS of screen cracking issues. The pricing is the same as the kindle WiFi, and the new nook is also just WiFi but it comes with a memory card slot. The kindle does not. It also boasts a two month battery life - twice that of kindle.
Now I'm not showing favortism here. I have both a nook and a kindle. I prefer the color nook because I like the backlit screen (as I've blogged about here). It's just interesting, this battle between nook and kindle.
My question is who is going to be the first to bite the bullet and drop the price to less than $100 - maybe even close to $85? It will be interesting to see the result of that. I know I would buy one for my mother at that price. So one more sold. I would also use them in giveaways for my books. Bam, two more sales. But who will be first? Opinions?
The Kindle has one huge avantage over the nook that most Americans don't realise, SL.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, if you happen to live outside the USA the nook is utterly useless.
Yep, the world's largest book-store doesn't give a fig about the rest of the world.
It will let you spend an eternity signing up, downloading a nook app for your PC or whatever, then another eternity choosing the ebooks you want.
Only when you try to pay does it delight in emailing back and telling you that you need a US address.
For an e-book???!!!
The American market may be big, but as Borders found to its cost, it wasn't big enough for two major retailers. The company slower to adapt went to the wall.
The internet is called the "world wide web" for a reason.
If B&N can't get its act together as a world class player then how can it hope to compete long term with a company like Amazon that most definitely is?
Excellent point Mark. And I think you have brought that to my attention before! You're right. If you can't use outside the US, your losing too much of the market. I wonder why they haven't fixed that. Seems like a huge mistake.
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