With Microsoft having “invested” $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook Media (Nook hardware, online bookstore, e-book, and college bookstore operations) in 2012 for a 17.6% stake, the hapless Microsoft is taking a ~$185 million loss.
“The bookstore retailer bought out Microsoft’s preferred interest in Nook for about $120 million in cash and stock, freeing Microsoft from further investments in the business,” Chelsey Dulaney reports for ADVFN. “Barnes & Noble, struggling to adapt as book buyers migrated to online retailers like Amazon.com Inc., said Thursday that it expects the planned split of its Nook Media unit from its retail stores to occur by the end of August, behind its initial projection for a separation by March.”
“Microsoft invested in Nook in 2012, pledging more than $600 million to help prop up Barnes & Noble’s digital-reading business. In return, Barnes & Noble committed to creating e-reading apps for new computers, phone and tablets powered by Microsoft’s Windows software. But since the deal was struck, circumstances for both companies have changed. Barnes & Noble slowed work on its e-reading devices and tablets as its sales slumped and laid off much of the workforce devoted to its Nook devices,” Dulaney reports. “Meanwhile, Microsoft, which has its own Windows tablets and smartphones, shifted its consumer-device strategy following sales hiccups. The companies scaled back their partnership earlier this year, allowing Barnes & Noble to stop developing the Nook e-reading app for devices powered by Microsoft software.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, the joy of cleaning up Monkey Boy’s messes.
gee….guess the Nook goes in the “drawer of electronic death” with my zune and surface…..
GeE tHaT’s tooOooO bAD………………!
Just curious, why didn’t you stop after the zune?
Oh, ’tis just a minor rounding error.
Your right, AZ. Internet startups cost more than this!!!
😉
Naaaah! it’s nothing more than “sales hiccups”—says so, right there in the article. A little dose of gripe water and M$ will be just hunky dory again!
Hahaha good one. If their margin is $1 per unit, they need to blip 185 million of them. That’s quite a blip. Or do they even make any profit on them yet? The blip may be infinite.
So how do we get Microsoft to blow through their cash wad FASTER?! The sooner they’re dead, the sooner we can end The Stone Age Of Computing.
The tech titanic has already struck the iceberg. Microsoft is bleeding cash at an alarming rate and there is nothing further to do other than to sit back and enjoy the show. What Ballmer set in motion is now inevitable and completely unstoppable.
Sorry, but you don’t know WTF you are talking about. Microsoft’s operations generated $32 billion in positive cash flow last year.
They can keep making stupid decisions for a very long time without fear.
yes indeed. The MS cash cow is a foul smelling rotten corpse and you’re still buying burgers.
I wish Apple would make a B&W e-ink-type of reading pad so we can read books bought from the Apple store on them.
Is there no end to Microsoft’s hits. You can’t deny that in that respect they are top of the tree in successful payments for various missteps, poor investments, even poorer technology and down right strategic disasters.
Anyone wanna take bets on how it takes Ballmer to run the Clippers into the ground?
——RM
Wikipedia pulls no punches:
“The Los Angeles Clippers are the laughing stock of the National Basketball Association.”
Still, they are 13 and 5 right now, compared to the Lakers, who are 5 and 14. Maybe those mandated Surfaces are helping the Clippers coaching staff get real work done.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that it take a while for the new impact of a CEO to be fully implemented. We are just starting to reap the benefits of the great (no longer questioned) leadership of Tim Cook and I’m going to give Nutella that chance.
The guy will have a lot of Balmer messes to clean up that’s for sure.