“Barnes & Noble Inc. is retreating from the intensely competitive tablet wars, after sustaining heavy losses,” Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“The bookseller reported Tuesday that losses at its Nook digital business blew out in the fourth quarter, easily wiping out reduced profits generated at its bookstores,” Trachtenberg reports. “As a result Barnes & Noble said it would stop manufacturing its own color tablets, instead going with co-branded devices made by third-party manufacturers.”
Trachtenberg reports, “Barnes & Noble will continue to design and make its own black-and-white Nook e-readers. But the decision to look elsewhere for its color tablets marks the end of its efforts to compete on the tablet front with much deeper-pocketed technology companies as Apple Inc.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bloodbath.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Double 07” for the heads up.]
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They had a tablet?
Lol… That was a good one!
Also, Amazon selling their POS at a loss just about destroys the ability for B&N and the likes to compete fairly.
Selling at a loss, what a brilliant strategy. No wonder Wall Street is Bullish over Amazon.
But that’s good for consumers, donchaknow? I learned so at the altar of the DoJ.
Yes destructive of the economy at large but great for consumers! Who says government doesn’t know exactly what they’re doing?!
AAPL drops tonight coz the expert thinks they exit the tablet market , so will Apple ?
Am I right ?
Not surprising.
Who buys P&S cameras, answering machines, alarm clocks and voice recorders anymore?
Well, I can say for certain for certain that a good P&S camera still takes *far* better pictures than any phone’s camera. If I’m going somewhere where I expect there to be a lot of photo ops, or some place where I want high quality images, I still pack either my P&S (if the shots will be close), or my DSLR (for longer-ranged shots) due to the better quality of images.
Many people will settle for “good enough” pics for Facebook and what-not, but I like having high quality pics that work as desktop backgrounds on my MacBook Pro, and the images from my iPhone 4S are simply not up to snuff.
Photos taken with an iPhone 5 should be more than good enough quality to use as a desktop background on an iMac, let alone a MacBook Pro. I have a panorama taken on mine printed on a proofing printer at work which is ten inches tall, and over two feet across, with no visible pixelation. Photos I’ve taken with mine look fine on my 40″ Sony Bravia 1080p, from iPhoto on my Mac Mini.
Isn’t it interesting that they claim they’re exiting a market dominated by other players with deeper pockets? Let’s consider for a moment how Apple’s pockets got deep: iOS devices. They’d be more honest to acknowledge that the market for a limited-purpose device (color Nook) just isn’t there.
Oh well: Play the underdog card if you must — “We’re the little guy in your neighborhood and we just can’t compete against that big tax-avoiding eBook price fixing Apple…”
I think the deeper pockets they’re referring to are Amazon’s, not Apple’s. Amazon is the one bankrolling the Kindle losses, which B&N simply cannot afford to do.
Playing the underdog card is karma biting their ass. They had no problem being a big national chain killing local bookstores. Buying in bulk to get lower prices from publishers. Having Starbucks, music, cards, and plenty of space to sit in A/C. They had no pity for the local underdogs they put out of business. Now they are in the same boat.
Amen to that!
They even wiped out my sister’s job at a college bookstore by buying the place out, and then making almost all textbook purchases online-only. Prices stayed the same, but no more personal service, no more used books you could look through before buying, and two dozen people laid off.
That’s called KARMA, what’s go around come around.
It is a good day to Die. . . .
Where did it say B&N was exiting the tablet market? They will still be selling B&W Nook readers, just not color versions.
That makes a lot of since.
Smart, Barnes & Noble is staying in the black-and-white Nook e-readers market, not the color tablet market where they can’t hope to compete.
Apple does not make a b&w E-Ink tablet. People who don’t like reading from, or can’t read from, a color screen (like my wife) love the b&w E-Ink screen. The rest, like me, want the versatility of a real tablet. I use the Nook app for the iPad.
The Nook pad is a nifty little device. If I had the extra money, I would buy one of those to supplement my iPad.
That should read . . .
The Noon {b&w} pad is a nifty little {reading} device.
Noon? This isn’t my day.
Looks like it’s Steve’s day, not yours…
If they rename the Nook to NookE sales would go through the roof.
NookE book? I hear there’s a market for those, both in words (Danielle Steel) and pictures (Playboy). Sounds like an opportunity.
And you won’t have to compete with Apple for that market. 😉
MDN, thanks for linking to WSJ article that I have to pay a subscription to in order to read the article. Not helpful.