“Microsoft is offering to pay $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nook Media LLC, the digital book and college book joint venture with Barnes & Noble and other investors, according to internal documents we’ve obtained,” Eric Eldon reports for TechCrunch. “In this plan, Microsoft would redeem preferred units in Nook Media, which also includes a college book division, leaving it with the digital operation — e-books, as well as Nook e-readers and tablets.”
“The documents also reveal that Nook Media plans to discontinue its Android-based tablet business by the end of its 2014 fiscal year as it transitions to a model where Nook content is distributed through apps on ‘third-party partner’ devices,” Eldon reports. “Speculation about the plan to discontinue the Nook surfaced in February. The documents we have are not clear on whether the third-party tablets would be Microsoft’s own Windows 8 devices, tablets made by others (including competing platforms) or both. Third-party tablets, according to the document, are due to get introduced in 2014.”
Eldon reports, “The Nook division has taken a beating this year following a slow holiday season. The new models have sold at a discount for weeks at a time and their flagship 10-inch Nook HD+ fell from $269 to $179. Kindle is offering the Fire HD for the same price. The hardware, while in many ways superior to Amazon’s, seems to have fallen behind in the race to market share and revenue. If Microsoft steps in, the dedicated e-reader race between the stalwart B&N and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon could be over.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Watch Ballmer screw up this the same way he screwed up the Skype experience after it was brought in for Microsoft to manage.
Well, yeah. But that’s to be expected. I just want to watch Microsoft blow more major dough on yet another loss leader.
They couldn’t wait a year or two until Nook goes out of business?
No, then Microsoft wouldn’t be able to announce that it had (yet again) paid over $1 billion for something worth much less.
I like it … I like it a lot!
Well, I wonder which way “over” this statement meant?
“If Microsoft steps in, the dedicated e-reader race between the stalwart B&N and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon could be over.”
🙂
It will be a few weeks before Microsoft can put a kickstand on it and add a clicking keyboard attachments so you can dance with it.
lol. very good!
I shudder to think of the forthcoming TV commercials.
As much as Microsoft spends on buying other companies, you would think they would learn to focus. Take the billions and create a excellent core product range. Yet, this is Microsoft and they have always looked to the easiest way… Be it to circumvent the competition by nefarious ways, purchase them, or copy their products. Microsoft never seems to change.
That’s because Microsoft hasn’t really created anything since the original Word for Mac. They don’t know how to innovate something and actually bring it to the market.
Few large companies on the planet have a tight focus. In a vain attempt to satisfy the insatiable vampires on Wall St., executives are always looking to “grow” or “diversify” the business.
Moreover, look at merger and acquisition activity. Even Apple snatches up smaller companies whenever it wants. The iTunes itself was an acquisition. Technically, OS X was an acquisition. and so forth.
MS just continues to do the same — that’s what it has always done. Control market share by acquisition if it can’t compete on product merits.
Watch as Nook devices are discontinued, with any unique technology that they offered slowly rolled into MS’s bloated products. Bad for the market, bad for the consumer, and yes — bad for Apple too.
The world needs more healthy competition, not less.
Mike,
As I understand it, Apple handles what it buys a very different way than Microsoft does.
Apple looks at technologies and buys the rights to it and the people that know how it works. It then looks to include that technology into Apple products. Remember Siri. ???
Microsoft buys the company and destroys most of what made the tech great. It tries to force it into the mold of microsoft. Remember Danger?
Two totally different directions.
So if I am reading this right, the Nook e-store is going to continue? Just the Nook hardware is going away? Including the B&W readers? But the Nook app on my iPad will still work?
The first toll in the death knell for Nook. It’ll get F’d up and shut down faster than Ballmy can shout “developers” 3 times.
Damn! Let Microsoft have your tech! Sucker on the line; Reel him in.
Spend Microsoft! Spend SPEND SPEND!
O please no!
I like Nook technology better than Amazon’s thing. I like all of the iPads better, but… Even the iOS apps for reading Nook products I like better. MS’s just gonna take and make it bad, starting with compatibility with iOS devices. So yes, PLEASE NO!