AllThingsD » Barnes & Noble

Japan's Rakuten Set to Challenge Amazon With Help From Kobo

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:40:13 +0000

Who is Amazon’s biggest competitor? It may be a Japanese company you’ve never heard of.

Rakuten is set on challenging Amazon’s global dominance by appealing to the third-party merchants Amazon works with today and by growing it’s digital content business to compete with the Kindle.

We recently learned about the company’s strategy through the eyes of Neel Grover, the CEO of Buy.com, Rakuten’s online shopping subsidiary in the U.S.

For now, Rakuten is admittedly Amazon’s much smaller competitor, though it is dominant in Japan.

The publicly held company is worth $14.5 billion compared to Amazon’s $85 billion market capitalization, and it pales in comparison to Amazon’s mass in the U.S. Buy.com is ranked 410th here versus Amazon’s sixth-place standing, according to Compete.

But Grover said Rakuten has a two-part plan for going up against Amazon.

First, it will target and partner with third-party resellers and merchants.

Amazon does this, too, but often ends up competing with the merchants because it has its own warehouses and products that it is selling, he said.

“Oftentimes Amazon will compete with the retailer. [Third-party merchants] teach Amazon what to buy and sell, which is ultimately not good for the merchant,” he said.

Rakuten, on the other hand, does not own any warehouses or any inventory itself and instead gives retailers — brick and mortar or e-commerce — the tools and traffic to support their own businesses.

In May 2010, Rakuten acquired Buy.com.

“I sought out Rakuten. … I thought their model was one that would give us a unique differentiator in the U.S. and we could learn and bring their model to our site and customers,” Grover said. “We are still in the final stages of transforming, and it’s taken a bit of time to get it transformed.”

But, he confidently added, “It will win out in the long-term.”

A similar approach is being taken by eBay, another e-commerce giant in the U.S.

The second part of Rakuten’s plan is to go after Amazon’s growing digital business, spanning music, e-books and other content.

In November, the Japanese company purchased Kobo, a runner-up in the e-reader race behind the Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. It paid $315 million in cash for the Canadian company.

Rakuten is banking on the Kobo in assisting with its move into providing downloadable media to consumers, starting with e-books.

At the time of the acquisition, Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis told All Things D that Rakuten will give Kobo the financial backing to grow internationally, as well as compete in the U.S.

“The U.S. is absolutely important. It’s fundamental. We have millions of U.S. users today, and we plan to grow that substantially, and internationally it represents a big opportunity as well,” he said.

Earlier this month, Buy.com started linking to Kobo from its site, so that consumers have the option of buying a physical copy of a book or a digital version. Other integration efforts are also under way.

It also wants to get into other digital content, like music. Back in 1999, Buy.com was one of the original sites to have a digital music store, but Grover said it was a pretty poor experience because of all the restrictions that record labels were mandating. A lot of that has now changed.

“We are definitely looking as a group at all digital content. … We are looking at different solutions, but today we have not continued on with our initial music store,” he said.

As with Kobo and Buy.com, acquisitions are always an option, he said.

“We’ll continue to look at everything that would make our business better. It hasn’t been shy over the past two years. We have a global vision to create an e-commerce marketplace offering all goods, and we continue to see that grow.”

And going up against Amazon, some serious growth is what Rakuten and Buy.com will need.

Microsoft, LG Sign Patent Agreement Covering Android, Chrome OS

Ina Fried — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:36:15 +0000

Microsoft and LG Electronics said on Thursday that they have signed a patent agreement covering LG devices running Android and Chrome OS. It’s the latest in a string of such deals that Microsoft has signed, though it has also sued both Motorola Mobility and Barnes & Noble over Android-based devices.

People Love the Nook Tablet, Hate the Nook Touch. Also: Would You Like to Buy the Nook Business?

Peter Kafka — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:55:42 +0000

What a weird roulette wheel of a press release from Barnes & Noble this morning. Take a spin and you’ll find that:

Nook sales are booming! They were up 70 percent over the holidays, driven by the new Nook Tablet, which apparently sold well, even though it was up against Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad.
Nook sales are disappointing: No one wanted to buy the black-and-white Nook Touch.
Barnes & Noble’s digital business is booming! Content sales were up 113 percent over the holidays. By the end of its fiscal year in May, B&N figures it will have sold $450 million worth of digital stuff. That will put it on an annual run rate of at least $700 million — that’s 10 percent of last year’s overall sales.
Things are so good, in fact, that the company might spin off its Nook/digital business altogether.
But things aren’t that good: B&N lowered its guidance for every one of its 2011 fiscal year metrics, including revenue, EBITDA, and online and offline sales. It blamed the bulk of the change on those crummy Nook Touch sales, as well as additional investments it’s making. But I’m not quite sure how poor Nook Touch sales, for instance, affected revenue at its brick-and-mortar stores.
To spell that out: B&N says fiscal-year revenue will be $7.0 billion to $7.2 billion, down from an initial forecast of $7.4 billion. Store sales are expected to increase 1 percent, instead of 2 to 3 percent; Barnesandnoble.com sales will be up 40 percent to 50 percent, instead of 60 percent to 70 percent; and EBITDA will be $150 million to $180 million, instead of $210 million to $250 million. Losses, meanwhile, will balloon up to $1.10 to $1.40 a share, instead of the initial forecast of 10 cents to 50 cents a share.

Got all that?

Investors certainly have. Or at least they seem to have drilled down the guidance change — the second one the company has made in the last couple of months. They are punishing the stock this morning, sending it down 27 percent.

Meanwhile, at least one part of the release makes sense: Nook Touch misstep aside, B&N certainly seems to have a found a fast-growth digital business. And spinning off the business would (theoretically) help them solve at least one problem they’ve been grappling with recently: How do you recruit stars to a tech business in a red-hot labor market (for tech, that is), when you can’t dangle red-hot stock options in front of them?

Did you know, for instance, that B&N has a couple hundred people working for them on digital stuff at a Palo Alto outpost? It’s true! But if the New York-based company is going to make a real go of taking on Amazon, Apple, et al, it’s going to have to beef up that group significantly, and that means convincing people that there’s as much upside there as there would be at a Facebook or a Dropbox, etc. Tough sell, but breaking off from a no-growth dead-tree business would be a start.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Ronstik)

Barnes & Noble Shops Publisher

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:00:24 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc. has put its Sterling Publishing business up for sale, say people familiar with the situation, signaling a likely end to its decades-long involvement in the publishing of its own books.

The book retailer has been in publishing since the 1970s and expanded the effort in 2003, when it acquired Sterling for about $115 million.

Now, however, Barnes & Noble, facing intense competition from Amazon.com Inc., is recasting itself as a technology company with emphasis on its Nook e-reading devices and its Nook tablet. The sale of Sterling would allow Barnes & Noble to focus on its core businesses.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Still Looking for Gift Ideas? Wal-Mart Recommends a Box for Men.

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:27:18 +0000

Still don’t know what to get your loved one for the holidays?

Well, you better decide fast. For many sites, today is the final day that orders can be placed to get guaranteed delivery by Christmas.

If you are having a hard time coming up with ideas, there are plenty of Facebook applications that will offer recommendations based on a gift recipient’s interests.

Late last month, Wal-Mart launched an application called Shopycat, which does just that.

To be helpful, I got a list of Shopycat’s 20 most-recommended gifts. At the very top of the list was an unexpected item called a “personalized keepsake box” for men. The box, which costs $24.76, is designed to hold a man’s watch, jewelry, money clip and/or other items.

It’s not clear what a person’s interests would have been for this to surface at the top of so many lists (maybe the popularity of the holiday-themed Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg music video “Dick in a Box” had something to do with it?) After all, many of the other items on the list are clearly based on someone’s favorite TV shows, movies or videogames. For instance, other fun items that made the list were action figures for “The Big Lebowski,” an Angry Birds beanie and “Star Wars” bathrobes.

As for the man box, it is sold out, so clearly some people agreed with Wal-Mart that it made for a good gift.

Not all of the items are recommendations for items sold on the Wal-Mart site. It also refers shoppers to other sites, such as ThinkGeek.com, Barnes & Noble, CBSstore.com and RedEnvelope.

Wal-Mart did not say how many people have used the app since it went live last month, but given that Wal-Mart has 11 million Facebook fans, it could represent big numbers.

Here is the entire list of most-recommended gifts for 2011:

Beyond Tablets: The Next Five Computing Form Factors

Sarah Rotman Epps — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:34:17 +0000

With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 a few short weeks away, it’s a good time to look ahead at what’s next for consumer technology. All eyes have been on tablets: Apple sold 40 million iPads in just 18 months, with 11 million sold in this past quarter alone — phenomenal growth for a new form factor. With the Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet finding their own successful markets, it’s easy to see why tablets attract so much attention and excitement. But computing evolution doesn’t end here — tablets, while still growing rapidly as a category, are not the final form factor.

Product strategists in the PC industry are gearing up for 2012 to be the year of the “ultrabook” — very thin, very light laptops, usually with solid-state drives (SSD), that compete with Apple’s MacBook Air — such as the Asus Zenbook and Lenovo U300s. We agree that ultrabooks’ lighter, thinner form will appeal to many consumers. Already, 21 percent of U.S. online consumers say they’re interested in owning one, according to a Forrester Research survey fielded in September. But we see the ultrabook as an evolution of the laptop rather than an entirely new form factor. So what is the next big thing in consumer computing?

The “next big thing” is likely to be many things — we anticipate accelerating form factor diversification beyond the desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones we have today, as we advance deeper into the Post-PC Era. Based on what we see in research and development labs, new products beginning to come to market and gaps in consumer computing experiences, we’ve identified these five form factors as the best candidates for what comes next:

Wearables: Wearable devices, or “wearables” for short, are devices worn on or near the body that sense and relay information. Many wearables, like the heads-up display (HUD) contact lenses in development at the University of Washington, are years from marketability. But other wearables are already available as consumer products, for uses such as communication and health and fitness. An increasing number of wearables in the health-and-fitness space interact with Apple iOS devices, such as the Lark Technologies vibrating wristband that doubles as an alarm clock and a sleep sensor; and BodyMedia FIT Armbands, which have four sensors to track activity, sleep and calorie intake. WIMM Labs, a Foxconn-funded start-up in Los Altos, Calif., has designed multifunctional wearables, based on Google’s Android software, that it will license to other companies.
Embedded devices: We define embedded devices as physical objects that incorporate computing processors and sensors, excluding those worn on the body, which we classify as wearables. Like wearables, embedded devices are diverse in form, ranging from devices such as Livescribe smartpens that fit into your pocket, to LG Thinq refrigerators that sit in your kitchen. Embedded devices may or may not have a display — Livescribe pens don’t; the LG Thinq appliances do. Today, embedded devices are widely used in industrial automation and automotives, and they have emerging consumer uses in home automation, entertainment and productivity.
Surfaces: Surfaces are large interactive displays, which may incorporate multitouch, voice and gesture control, facial recognition, near field communication (NFC), quick response (QR) codes or other input/output mechanisms. Today, surfaces are found mostly in public places such as hotels (Microsoft Surface tables in Sheraton bars) and conferences and events (Obscura Digital’s custom multitouch video installations), as well as in education (interactive whiteboards) and news media (red state/blue state maps), but we see potential for additional uses, especially in retail and marketing. For example, retailers such as Victoria’s Secret have commissioned the design firm frog design to create interactive displays for their retail stores. In Seoul, South Korea, retailers use surfaces to extend their reach beyond their stores: Tesco Homeplus, the No. 2 grocery retailer in South Korea, built “virtual malls” in subway stations to reach more customers without building more stores. Commuters take pictures of QR codes under the groceries they want to buy, and the groceries are delivered to their homes.
Flexible displays: Flexible displays are computing screens that can be rolled, folded or flexed. Flexible devices can take the form of personal devices, such as an e-reader, or larger surface displays, such as furniture or wallpaper. Flexible displays are likely the farthest from becoming commercialized products because of the lack of a defined use case or customer: Polymer Vision, a spinoff of Philips Electronics, promoted its flexible eBook Reader for years, but declared bankruptcy before bringing the device to market. HP has been developing printable Mylar displays that it imagines could be used for candy wrappers, armband computers for the military or living room wallpaper, but the displays are still several years from commercialization.
Miniprojectors: Miniprojectors are small devices that project a larger image onto another surface or, in the case of holographic projection, into 3-D space. Miniprojectors can be combined with cameras that recognize gesture to become interactive, similar to the Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360. Today, miniprojectors such as the Brookstone Pocket Projector are gaining in popularity as iPhone accessories. But they’re still niche products, as consumers must purchase them separately. Apple has already filed a patent to embed interactive projectors into its iPhones, iPads and Macs. Embedded miniprojectors would appeal primarily to information workers, but there could be broader consumer uses as well, such as impromptu photo slide shows or YouTube viewing in a group.

It’s easy to read about computing wallpaper, or contact lenses with embedded heads-up displays, and think that these form factors have no bearing on what product strategists are doing today. But product strategists who see what’s coming can anticipate disruption — or even innovate and become disruptors themselves. As you think about what’s coming in 2012 and beyond, know that none of these devices will operate in isolation. The most successful products will work with other products — for example, wearables that talk to smartphones and TVs; surfaces that are activated by the presence of your smartphone. We’re living in a multidevice, multiconnection world, and the best experiences will be those that work across devices and platforms. In that sense, the next phase of the Post-PC Era doesn’t look so different from today.

Sarah Rotman Epps is a senior analyst at Forrester Research, serving consumer product strategy professionals. Follow her on Twitter at @srepps

Barnes & Noble Hoping to Sell a Ton of Nook Tablets Over Holidays

John Paczkowski — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:54:06 +0000

Barnes & Noble has high hopes for its new Nook Tablet this holiday season. So high, in fact, that it has reportedly raised orders for the device.

Upstream component suppliers tell industry trade mag Digitimes that they estimate Barnes & Noble has shipped (not sold) about one million Nooks since the tablet’s mid-November debut.

That’s about 200,000 more than the company was expected to push into the channel before year’s end. A significant increase. The reason for it? Strong sales in North America over Thanksgiving, which kicked off the holiday shopping season.

That bodes well for the Nook Tablet, which Barnes & Noble said last week is already its fastest-selling Nook device to date. It’s also great news for the company’s growing Nook business. According to Barnes & Noble’s second-quarter earnings, the value of that business — which includes not just the devices themselves but their content and accessories as well — hit $220 million during the period, an 85 percent increase.

iPad Magazine Readers to Publishers: More, Please

Peter Kafka — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:00:46 +0000

After an initial wave of excitement about iPad magazines, some publishers have dialed back their enthusiasm. But the readers who have actually downloaded them like them quite a bit.

So says a survey commissioned by a publishers’ trade group: It finds that two-thirds of people who read magazines on tablets and e-readers think they’ll be spending more time with digital issues over the next year. Many of them — 46 percent — are consuming more magazines — both in print and digital form — than they did before they got their hands on an iPad.* And 63 percent of them want more digital stuff to read.

Overall, the survey has generally sunny news for the magazine business, though it’s fair to wonder if the Association of Magazine Media would release a survey that had glum news.

The report does offer some guidance for the industry: 89 percent of readers want publishers to adopt a uniform way of navigating magazines, and 69 percent like watching in-app videos that run less than minute.

The other point worth noting about the report is that it exists, period. The survey, conducted earlier this month, was completed by 1,009 people “pre-screened for their ownership of mobile devices and their use of magazine-branded apps.” Up until now, pollsters couldn’t have been able to find enough respondents to make that kind of poll possible, says Chris Kevorkian, the trade group’s executive vice president for digital: “We’ve been wanting to do this research for some time, but didn’t have the critical mass to query.”

*The survey isn’t explicitly about iPad magazine editions — in theory, it covers all tablet magazine apps, as well as magazines consumed on e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. But the majority of these things are being read on Apple’s device.

Time Inc. Magazines Make It to the Kindle Fire, After All

Peter Kafka — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:43:24 +0000

It took some haggling, but Time Inc. is going to get its magazines on Amazon’s new tablet, alongside titles from many other big publishers.

Time Warner’s publishing unit told its employees this afternoon that five magazines — Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People and Real Simple — would be available on the Kindle Fire tomorrow.

The announcement comes after negotiations that dragged on for weeks and continued through Tuesday morning — a process that baffled most of Time Inc.’s peers, who signed on to the new device in time for its September unveiling.

Supposedly, the major stumbling block for Time Inc. was that Amazon has retained the ability to set the retail price for the magazines it sells, which means it could theoretically slash prices or give away the magazines for free. That scenario would be a major bummer for all the publishers who have been diligently trying to convince subscribers and newsstand buyers that they’ve been underpaying for their reading material.

But Amazon has told Time’s competitors, like Condé Nast, Hearst and Meredith, that it doesn’t intend to beat down prices, and that assurance was apparently enough for them. Jeff Bewkes’ company apparently needed more convincing.

This never seemed to be an issue, by the way, with Barnes & Noble and its new Nook tablet; Time Inc. was a part of that gadget’s launch announcement.

Like the titles that Time Inc. sells via the iPad and other Android tablets, access to the Kindle Fire editions will come via bundled deals, where consumers pay a single price and get both paper and digital copies of their magazines.

Here’s the memo that consumer marketing head Steve Sachs sent out at the end of the day:

November 15, 2011
To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Steve Sachs
Re: Time Inc. Titles Now Available on Amazon’s Kindle Fire

I’m pleased to share the news that Time Inc. has just reached a deal with Amazon that will allow subscribers to our magazines to enjoy their subscriptions on the new Kindle Fire. Starting tomorrow, subscribers of FORTUNE, PEOPLE, Real Simple, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and TIME will be able to access digital editions of these magazines on the Kindle Fire at no additional cost. Other Time Inc. titles will follow shortly.

To date, hundreds of thousands of Time Inc. print subscribers have authenticated to receive their digital editions, with thousands more being added each week. Our agreement with Amazon continues to expand our All Access strategy, adding the Kindle Fire to the growing list of platforms where consumers can enjoy our content, including Apple’s iPad, the Barnes & Noble NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet, the Android Marketplace and Next Issue’s store.

It’s important to note that Time Inc. is the only publisher designing all of its digital magazine apps specifically for tablets. Because we’re producing a rich consumer experience made for each device, our brands translate beautifully — and the Kindle Fire is no exception.

Adding the Amazon launch to our platforms has meant that IT and other dedicated teams have had to work quickly and nimbly. I want to offer a special thanks to all those who have been hard at work bringing our brands to life on tablets.

S.S.

A Kindle Swipes Fine, but Still Hooked on a Nook

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:23:22 +0000

Despite the advantages of full-featured touchscreen tablets like the iPad, plenty of people opt for e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, finding them more comfortable in the hand and easier on the eyes.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested the new Kindle Touch in a head-to-head comparison with Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch. The Kindle Touch includes several features that Kindle fans have been waiting for, particularly better navigation. The Nook Simple Touch, which came out last summer, dropped in price to $99 and received a software update last week.

Navigating these touchscreens is a breeze, and you’ll be happy reading with either the Kindle Touch or Nook Simple Touch. Both feature E-Ink, nonreflective screens without backlights—great for long stretches of reading. These smaller devices are also lighter than a tablet.

Overall, I prefer the Nook for its better price and usability.

The Nook

Each e-reader costs $99, but the Kindle Touch comes pre-loaded with so-called special offers—ads that take over the device’s screen when it’s in sleep mode and appear whenever you touch its Menu button. A Kindle Touch without on-screen ads is $139, or $40 more than the ad-free Nook. A Kindle Touch with a 3G Internet connection costs $149; Barnes & Noble doesn’t offer a 3G Nook Simple Touch.

Physically, the Kindle Touch is a bit taller, while the Nook is slightly wider with a contoured back that’s easier to hold. The Kindle Touch relies solely on tapping or swiping on the left or right of the device’s touchscreen to turn pages. Nook users can turn pages using these methods or physical buttons on the left and right sides of the screen.

I prefer the option of physical buttons so I can hold the device and not move my hand each time I want to turn the page. These buttons are also handy at times when touching the screen isn’t ideal, like after using suntan lotion at the beach.

Though the Kindle does a lot of the same things the Nook does, Amazon’s clever terms make these same actions sound more whimsical. When using the cloud to sync content and page location across devices, Amazon calls this Whispersync. Amazon’s community-generated encyclopedia is named Shelfari.

Three notable new features work with Amazon’s Kindle Touch.

X-Ray is a feature that displays book-report-like data points when someone taps the screen at any point while reading one of “thousands” (Amazon wouldn’t give a more specific number) of titles.

The Kindle

This could be a real boon for non-fiction readers, but since I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, X-Ray wasn’t too useful in my books. While reading John Grisham’s “The Litigators,” I used X-Ray to read Wikipedia descriptions of Chicago and Big Pharma. This data can also come from Shelfari.

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is available to Amazon Prime members—Prime costs $79 a year—and lets users borrow from over 5,000 titles. People who use this can borrow one book each month with no due date. I tried this and found books in the Kindle store listed with “borrow for free” icons where a price would normally display. I tapped this option beside “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and the book was sent to my Kindle. An on-screen message notified me that I couldn’t borrow again until Dec. 1.

Finally, Kindle users can borrow books from their public library via easy, wireless downloads, though these are bound by the same lending rules as physical library books. I borrowed a book from my Washington, D.C., public library by browsing available Kindle books on the library’s website and virtually checking out a book after entering my library card number. I followed a link from there to Amazon.com, where I selected the “Get Library Book” box, which appeared where “Add to Cart” is normally found. Your Kindle must be using a Wi-Fi connection—not 3G—to get these books.

The Nook can only load library books via a clumsy USB cord transferring process. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman said the company plans to offer Wi-Fi downloading of library books early next year.

If you’d rather lend books to fellow e-reader users, Kindle and Nook can do this. Books can be lent to friends for 14 days, during which time the book’s owner can’t read them.

The latest Nook software update makes improvements like the ability to turn pages faster. Both devices enable highlighting passages, though the Nook doesn’t allow public highlighting like the Kindle, which shares highlights with other readers. Both can send book details to friends via Facebook and Twitter. Kindle offers a text-to-speech function for books, which Nook lacks.

The Kindle Touch is a huge improvement on Amazon’s last Kindle, but Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch maintains its lead in this category.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Amazon Reminds Nook Buyers That the Fire Will Have Netflix, Too

Peter Kafka — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:59:32 +0000

So this is an Amazon press release worth reposting: Confirmation that when the Kindle Fire ships next week, it will give users the ability to install apps from Netflix and Pandora, among others.

No surprise there — Netflix and Pandora are two of the four apps Amazon talked up at the Fire’s rollout event (along with Facebook and Twitter).

But it’s worth reminding folks that the tablet will work with third-party video and music services, because those are the same two services that Barnes & Noble referred to, over and over, when it unveiled its own Nook tablet this week.

Barnes & Noble’s suggestion — actually, the company spelled it out repeatedly — was that while its tablet wouldn’t have an integrated music/movies vending machine like Amazon will have, that was actually an advantage, because it meant it could work with outside services like Netflix and Pandora.

Anecdotally, that seems to have been an effective ploy — lots of folks I’ve talked with about the two tablets are under the impression that Amazon won’t have Netflix, because Netflix is a rival to Amazon’s in-house service. That said, the Nook will have access to Hulu Plus, and the Fire doesn’t (for now).

The Nook and the Fire are also on equal footing when it comes to Google’s Android Market — users won’t be able to shop there using either device, even though both tablets are built using Android. Barnes & Noble was upfront about this earlier this week; Amazon doesn’t spell it out but makes it clear via the release below, which says Fire users will be able to use “several thousand of the most popular Android apps.”

Press release excerpt:

Facebook, Pandora, Netflix, Rhapsody, Games from Electronic Arts, Zynga and Rovio, and Several Thousand More Apps and Games Coming To Kindle Fire Next Week

Just like with movies and TV shows, music, books, and magazines, Kindle Fire offers a fully-integrated Android apps and games experience – purchase or register for an app or game once, enjoy it on your Kindle Fire and other Android-based devices – and all apps and games are backed up in the Amazon Cloud for re-download anytime

SEATTLE – November 9, 2011 (NASDAQ: AMZN) – When Kindle Fire customers across the country open their boxes next week, they will be able to choose from several thousand of the most popular Android apps and games, including Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, Facebook, The Weather Channel and popular games from Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap and Rovio. Kindle Fire customers will be able to download these apps and games without having to register multiple times and using Amazon’s simple and secure 1-Click payment technology. Plus, all apps are Amazon-tested on Kindle Fire for the best experience possible, customers can get a great “paid” app for free every day, and once you’ve downloaded an app from the Amazon Appstore, it’s available on Kindle Fire as well as your other Android-based devices.

“We started talking to app developers everywhere the day we introduced Kindle Fire, and the response has been overwhelming,” Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “In addition to over 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, books, and magazines from Amazon, we are excited to offer customers thousands of apps and games to choose from on Kindle Fire – from Pandora and Rhapsody to Facebook and Twitter to Netflix, as well as popular games from EA, Zynga and many other top game developers. And this is only the beginning – we’re adding more apps and games every day across all categories.”

With the Netflix app, Kindle Fire customers who are Netflix members can browse and instantly watch unlimited TV shows and movies and resume watching where they left off on their TV or computer. “We’re excited to team up with Amazon to give what we think will be a huge community of Kindle Fire owners the opportunity experience all that Netflix has to offer,” said Bill Holmes, Vice President of Business Development at Netflix. “We’re certain that our members will have a great viewing experience on Kindle Fire.”

… Additional examples of apps and games that will be available to Kindle Fire customers include Allrecipes, Bloomberg, Cut the Rope, Doodle Fit, Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja, Jenga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Airport Mania, Battleheart, Pulse, The Cat in the Hat, Quickoffice Pro, Jamie’s 20-Minute Meals, IMDb Movies & TV, and Monkey Preschool Lunchbox.

B&N Sought Microsoft Inquiry

Thomas Catan — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:39:24 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc. lobbied the Justice Department as recently as this summer to open an antitrust probe of Microsoft Corp., alleging that the software giant was trying to kill off handheld devices like B&N’s Nook e-reader with a barrage of “frivolous” patent suits, court documents show.

In a series of letters and presentations to the department’s antitrust division, the bookseller’s lawyers accused Microsoft of trying to corner the market for handheld operating systems by threatening companies using Google Inc.’s Android software.

“Microsoft’s willingness to bully small players with expensive litigation raises a substantial barrier to entry in any market in which it claims dominance,” B&N’s general counsel, Eugene DeFelice, wrote in a March letter to the department’s then-antitrust chief, Christine Varney.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The Nook Doesn't Need the Cloud. The Nook Needs the Cloud. Discuss.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:49:31 +0000

If you buy the new Nook Tablet, you won’t have to depend on the Cloud to get all the media you love.

Except when you have to use to the Cloud to get all the media you love.

Confused? Not surprising. Barnes & Noble’s messaging around the Nook, which launched today, is a bit muddled. But let me try to spell it out for you:

Unlike Amazon and its Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble isn’t marketing its tablet with a proprietary cloud service that will get you access to music, movies and TV shows. Instead, the bookseller is leaving that up to other cloud-based services, like Netflix and Pandora.

But make no mistake — these are cloud-based services. Which means you’re almost always going to need an Internet connection to make them work.

And while Barnes & Noble is playing up the fact that its tablet comes with twice the storage capacity of the Kindle Fire, it doesn’t really think you’ll use that storage for music and video.

That is: You can “sideload” media you own onto the Nook from your PC or another device. But the company doesn’t think you will. It thinks you’ll stream your stuff instead.

In order to move movies and TV shows on the gadget, for instance, you wouldn’t be able to use any digital video you bought from Amazon or Apple. Instead you’d have to get your hands on unencrypted MP4 video files, or something similar. And if you know what that means, or how to do it, you’re not the Nook’s target audience.*

And while it’s possible to move music from your iTunes collection onto the machine, B&N doesn’t think you will do that, either.

Here’s a transcript of the brief exchange I had with B&N CEO William Lynch after his press conference, because I wanted to make sure I understood the company’s take:

Peter Kafka: Do you expect regular users to move media from their device to a Nook, or do you think most of them are going to get music and movies via Pandora and Netflix?

William Lynch: Probably more of the latter. Just because they have most of their libraries … I mean, you have a level of sophisticated user that does the former. But as I said, if you look at Netflix, they have 30 million [sic] subscribers..

Kafka: Right. And if I have music on iTunes, can I move it onto the Nook?

Lynch: You can take your MP3 and MP4 players …

Kafka: So I can convert it to an MP3, and move it …

Lynch: And move it, sideload it.

Kafka: OK. So it’s not really a mainstream use. You expect most people to stream music and movies to the device.

Lynch: That’s right.

After this conversation I triple-checked with B&N’s PR reps, who tell me that customers shouldn’t have to convert iTunes files, because most of them will already be in DRM-free AAC format. But the fact that the company’s CEO thinks they won’t want to sideload anyway is the real takeaway.

[UPDATE: Subscription music service Rhapsody, which will work with the Nook Tablet, tells me users will be able to cache some songs for offline play, so the storage capacity could put to use there. I've asked MOG, another Nook-compatible subscription service, if they're doing offering the same thing.]

There’s nothing wrong with that approach, theoretically. But if you’re not going to store movies on the device, then B&N shouldn’t argue that you could watch 5 HD movies on a long airplane flight, on a single charge, since you wouldn’t have any way of actually getting them (good luck streaming HD movies on airplane wireless). And it shouldn’t tell us that we could watch up to nine hours of video on the machine with wireless off, for the same reason.

It’s also a bit odd for B&N to play up its access to Netflix and Pandora, since those are two of the four apps that Amazon all but promised it would have on the Fire. (To be fair to B&N, it is also offering access to Hulu Plus, and Amazon hasn’t said boo about that.) And again — those are cloud-based services, which means they ought to be careful about reminding us that “people aren’t always connected to the Cloud,” which they did repeatedly throughout their press conference.

Product claims aside, the real story behind the mixed messaging seems to be that B&N still fundamentally views the Nook as a reading device which will let you read the stuff it sells. And you will be able to store lots of that stuff on the Nook, which means you won’t need Internet access to get it.

Digital books, magazines, etc., are a $65 billion to $70 billion market, Lynch said during his press conference. And that’s plenty for him for the time being: “We’re not going to launch something where we don’t think we can add material value just to get into the game.”

Reasonable enough. But Jeff Bezos and company are very much in that game. And if Lynch decides he wants to play later, he’ll have to play catch-up.

*B&N’s target audience is a woman with 2.3 kids, Lynch said after the event. So at the risk of perpetuating a stereotype, I’m going to assume that the advice a B&N rep gave me today — to rip a DRM-free MP4 from a DVD, then port it to the tablet — isn’t the one it’s going to bring up very often in its marketing materials.

Here Comes the New Nook. Cloud Sold Separately.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:00:33 +0000

Barnes & Noble shows off its new Nook in New York today, and unless we’ve all been victims of an elaborate prank, we know just about everything about the gadget. The big points are that it’s a lot like the old Android-based Nook Color, but more powerful, and it will cost $249 — $50 more than Amazon’s similar Kindle Fire.

As I noted last week, the new Nook will (reportedly) boast more speed and memory than Amazon’s tablet, and the assumption is that Barnes & Noble will argue that those specs are worth the extra money.

But unless Barnes & Noble has kept this part a real secret, the bookseller won’t offer a cloud service that’s anything like the one that Amazon has built.

Amazon is building up a semiclosed ecosystem, which will work best if consumers rely on it for access to not just books, but music and movies as well. Apple is building its own take on this idea, and Google is headed this way, too. But Barnes & Noble seems like it will ask consumers to rely on third-party services, like Hulu and Grooveshark, for access to songs and videos.

It’s entirely possible that all of these distinctions will be lost on people looking for a cheap-ish gadget that will let them read books and surf the Web. And presumably* both the Nook and the Fire do just fine when it comes to that.

But it will be interesting to see how Barnes & Noble treats the “C” word this morning. We’ll have live coverage starting around 9:45 a.m. ET.

*It’s important to remember that Amazon didn’t let any of the press that attended its Kindle Fire unveiling actually touch the device, so most of us are still fuzzy about how the thing actually works. I’m guessing that Barnes & Noble, which is (supposedly) going to start shipping its devices within a week, will let us feel up the Nook a bit today.

Barnes & Noble Gets Ready to Fire Back at the Kindle With a Nook Tablet

Peter Kafka — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:39:38 +0000

Barnes & Noble is set to unveil its newest Nook at a New York press conference Monday, but the Internet works on a faster schedule, and marketing materials for the new gadget hit the Web Thursday.

The upshot: The bookseller looks as if it will compete with Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire tablet with a $249 Nook tablet.

Barnes & Noble will apparently tell consumers that its device is worth the extra $50 because it has more memory and a faster processor. I’m sure that the Amazon reps will counter by explaining that their gadget works hand in hand with Amazon’s cloud services, which means that its Internet-based servers will handle much of the processing and storage duties.

In the big picture, the two devices are making a similar pitch. Both run versions of Google’s Android operating system; both are meant primarily as entertainment/consumption devices, not work machines; and both offer considerably fewer features than Apple’s iPad line, at a much lower price. We’ll see how consumers react this month, when both gadgets are scheduled to ship.

Something New From Nook, Coming in a Week

Peter Kafka — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:46:09 +0000

Barnes & Noble will be announcing … something at a New York City press conference in a week.

About what? The oblique invitation I just got in my inbox doesn’t say a word, other than promising that it will be a “very special announcement.” But the invite does include the company’s “n” logo from its Nook e-reader, so go ahead and make the logical leap.

The last time B&N announced something in NYC, back in May — same venue, by the way — it was a stripped-down, black-and-white touchscreen Nook.

Since then, of course, Amazon has refreshed its entire Kindle line, offering its own touchscreen readers as well as the (relatively) high-end Kindle Fire, which competes not only with the Nook, but with the iPad, too.

Your move, B&N.

*Update: Barnes & Noble’s PR reps asked me to remove the location and RSVP info from the invite. Easy enough to track down the event if you really want to (hint: per above, same location as last one) but I really empathize with clogged mailbox syndrome, so fair enough.

**And Jeffrey Trachtenberg from the WSJ spells it out: Look for a new tablet which “is expected to differ significantly from its well-received Nook Color.”

Barnes & Noble: $25 Off the Nook Color if You Leave Our Stock Price Alone!

John Paczkowski — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:54:38 +0000

The looming November launch of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet means bad tidings for Barnes & Noble this holiday season. That seems to be the market’s sentiment, anyway.

Fearing competitive pressure on Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color tablet, investors brutalized the bookseller’s shares in midafternoon trading. BKS tumbled more than 8 percent to $11.45 before recovering slightly. As I write this, it’s trading at $12.30, down more than 6 percent.

And Barnes & Noble is clearly feeling the fear. Almost immediately following Amazon’s announcement, the company broadcast an e-mail promotion to its customers offering $25 off the Nook Color along with free shipping.

Microsoft Signs Mega-Patent Deal With Samsung, Will Get Royalties on Every Android Device It Sells

Ina Fried — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:30:03 +0000

Microsoft is announcing today the biggest Android-related patent deal to date, signing a broad cross-licensing agreement with Samsung.

With the deal, Microsoft will get royalty revenue on every Android smartphone and tablet that Samsung sells. Redmond already has a deal with another major handset maker — HTC — that sells both Android and Windows Phone devices.

“Together with the license agreement signed last year with HTC, today’s agreement with Samsung means that the top two Android handset manufacturers in the United States have now acquired licenses to Microsoft’s patent portfolio,” Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and top IP lawyer Horacio Gutierrez said in a blog post. “These two companies together accounted for more than half of all Android phones sold in the U.S. over the past year.”

The pair point out that the list of licensees notably excludes the No. 3 player in the Android market in the U.S. — Motorola Mobility.

Microsoft sued Motorola, as well as Barnes & Noble, over Android-related patent claims. Meanwhile, Redmond inked licensing deals with several other companies, including Acer and ViewSonic, and several lesser-known companies.

While much of the focus around the Samsung agreement is likely to concern patents and Android, the deal also calls for the companies to continue to work together on Windows Phone.

“Microsoft and Samsung see the opportunity for dramatic growth in Windows Phones and we’re investing to make that a reality,” Windows Phone unit president Andy Lees said in a statement.

In the blog post, Smith and Gutierrez point to the deals with Samsung and HTC as a model for the industry.

“These agreements prove that licensing works,” the lawyers wrote. “They show what can be achieved when companies sit down and address intellectual property issues in a responsible manner.”

For more on Microsoft’s Samsung deal, check out AllThingsD’s interview with General Counsel Brad Smith.

Hearst Passes 300,000 Monthly Digital Subscribers, Takes a Bow

Peter Kafka — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:22:46 +0000

Hearst, which is about to sell its digital magazines via Amazon’s new tablet, wants the world to know it’s selling its digital magazines on plenty of other gadgets, too: The publisher says it is now racking up more than 300,000 paid digital downloads per month.

That’s spread out among sales from Apple’s App Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and the Zinio digital reader platform. “Now we’re going to get a fourth distribution channel tomorrow,” says Hearst president David Carey, without ever saying the word “Amazon.”

So what does that mean? Because digital numbers aren’t uniformly reported yet, it’s a little hard to figure how that compares to the rest of the industry.

Earlier this summer, for instance, Conde Nast put out a release announcing that it had distributed 242,000 digital copies in the six weeks after it started selling subscriptions via Apple’s App Store. But 136,000 of those came from print customers who got digital copies for free with their subscription.

[UPDATE: Conde offers some updated numbers: It says its monthly digital circulation is now 500,000; 225,000 of those are digital-only subscribers, with the rest getting bundles.]

And in Hearst’s case, the publisher is stressing that all 300,000 of its downloads were tied to a payment. Because unlike its peers, it doesn’t offer print/digital bundles.

Another way to look at it: Hearst sells yearly digital subscriptions for $19.99 a year. Since some of those download numbers come from individual sales, each monthly digital unit represents annual revenue of $15 to $20, according to people familiar with the company’s operations. In other words, Hearst’s digital editions are now on an annual run rate of $4.5 million to $6 million.

And yet another way: Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, one of Hearst’s most popular titles, sells about 2.5 million copies a month.

So this is still smallish stuff. But it is new stuff, and that’s encouraging for an industry trying to ease into the digital world without cutting off its legacy business.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if Amazon’s tablet buyers behave like iPad owners or Nook/Zinio users. While most of the digerati have focused on digital magazines on the iPad (guilty), Hearst has done best so far on the Nook and Zinio, both of which offer what digerati used to dismissively refer to as “glorified PDFs” (guilty again).

Then again, those platforms also generate more sales for Hearst because the publisher sells all of its 19 titles on those platforms. So far it has sold just 3 titles via Apple. What about Amazon?

Carey again declines to say the word “Amazon” out loud. “But for any future e-commerce opportunities, stores that we would go into would get everything,” he says. Do your own math there.

Amazon Rolls Out Kindle Library Lending

Peter Kafka — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:33:27 +0000

Amazon has launched its long-promised library lending program for its Kindle e-reader, and says more than 11,000 libraries are participating. E-book competitors — like Barnes & Nobles’ Nook and Sony’s Reader — already offer something comparable.

Barnes & Noble Losses Continue but Nook Business Soars

Maxwell Murphy — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:35:00 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s fiscal first-quarter loss narrowed less than expected but the bookseller continued to post robust sales growth tied to its popular Nook electronic-book reader.

Shares soared more than 15 percent at one point Tuesday morning to $13.22 apiece as the company recorded the first quarter in two years with better year-to-year bottom-line results.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In Latest Wireless Patent Move, HTC Sues Apple in Delaware

Ina Fried — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:06:40 +0000

In today’s episode of The (Wireless) People’s Court, HTC filed suit in Delaware against Apple, the latest round in their ongoing intellectual property spat.

HTC’s suit claims that a range of Apple products infringe on three of its patents, including iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs, according to Reuters.

Neither Apple nor HTC representatives were immediately available for comment.

It’s the latest move in a continuing spat between the Taiwanese cellphone maker and Apple. Apple first sued HTC back in March of last year, accusing HTC of infringing on 20 of its patents.

The U.S. International Trade Commission last month found that HTC is infringing on two of Apple’s patents.

Though HTC is the company named on Apple’s court documents, it is clear Apple also has all of Android in its crosshairs, with many of its complaints related to the way Google’s operating system works.

HTC, being a younger company than other vendors like Samsung and Motorola, however, has had less in the patent realm to defend itself. The company recently scooped up graphics chipmaker S3 from Via, in large part to gain that company’s patent holdings. The company has also suggested it is open to some sort of deal with Apple.

And of course, in the granddaddy of patent-related acquisitions, Google announced on Monday it plans to spend $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility.

The Apple-HTC spat is just one of many patent fights taking place in the wireless industry. Apple is also suing Samsung, while Microsoft is engaged in legal fights with Motorola and Barnes & Noble, and Oracle is suing Google.

Shedding Light on E-Reader Glare

Walt Mossberg — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 03:14:32 +0000

Can you help my light-sensitive eyes with e-reader advice? I thought Kindle sounded right for me, but I heard there might be an upgrade in the near future. True? Will it be an improvement I should wait for?

Though Amazon hasn’t made a formal announcement, I expect there will be new e-readers from that company in the coming months. I don’t have details, so I can’t say if any new models will be worth the wait. But it’s probable that Amazon will continue to improve on its line of gray-scale, E Ink readers while possibly adding a full-color tablet. If glare is a problem for you, I’d plan on going with an E Ink model, such as the current Kindle or the latest Nook from Barnes & Noble. Full-color tablets like the iPad tend to suffer from glare, especially in direct sunlight.

I have a child who would like to go to college to become an engineer. Most engineers I know use a PC. I would like to buy my son a Mac for college, but I don’t want to get him something he can’t use.

I know engineers who use Macs and others who use Windows PCs. However, my advice is to get your son whatever type of computer the college engineering department where he winds up suggests would be best. Your near-term goal isn’t to validate either your choice, or that of the engineers you or I know. It’s to get him the tool that is expected or preferred by the people who will be training him. If you want to buy him the computer before you know which school he’ll be attending, you may have to gamble, or research what likely colleges prefer.

I just started using OneNote on my Windows Notebook and love it. I am thinking of moving to a MacBook Air or Samsung Series 9. Both machines offer the balance of light weight and good performance I’m looking for. I was leaning toward the MacBook Air, until I learned that Office for the Mac does not include OneNote. I’ve read mixed reviews from MacBook Air users who run Windows and the Windows Office Suite. Do you have any experience in this area?

I occasionally run Windows 7 and the Windows version of Microsoft Office on a MacBook Air and find it works just fine. However, I haven’t used OneNote in that scenario, so I can’t say if it works as smoothly as the rest of Office. The Air is a terrific computer, but, as I have said for years, if you are heavily reliant on Windows software, it’s best to buy a Windows PC—in your case, the Samsung—even though Macs can run Windows.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Google Fires Back in Android Patent War of Words

Ina Fried — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:28:13 +0000

Google and Microsoft are starting to sound like the kids in the back of the car on a long road trip.

“He started it.”

“Nuh-uh.”

Anyway, Google has now posted its response to Microsoft’s assertion that it had in fact offered to jointly bid with Google on some Novell-owned patents.

In an updated blog post, Google says that’s true, but argues that doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft is trying to use its patents as a weapon against Android.

“It’s not surprising that Microsoft would want to divert attention by pushing a false ‘gotcha!’ while failing to address the substance of the issues we raised,” Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said in a Thursday update to Wednesday’s blog post. Drummond acknowledges that Microsoft made an offer, but adds, “If you think about it, it’s obvious why we turned down Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft’s objective has been to keep from Google and Android device-makers any patents that might be used to defend against their attacks.”

Jointly buying the patents, Drummond said, would have elminated Google’s ability to use the patents as a defense against Microsoft’s other Android patent claims. “Making sure that we would be unable to assert these patents to defend Android — and having us pay for the privilege — must have seemed like an ingenious strategy to them. We didn’t fall for it.”

The back-and-forth underscores just how critical patents have become in the mobile battle. Nearly everyone in the smartphone business is a plaintiff, defendant or both in some patent matter. Microsoft, for its part, has been seeking royalties from those making Android products, having reached an agreement with HTC (as well as some smaller Android players) and having filed suits against Motorola and Barnes & Noble.

Meanwhile, Microsoft PR head Frank Shaw has begun his reply to Drummond’s update, with a warning that the response may take a couple of tweets.

“We offered Google the opportunity to bid with us to buy the Novell patents; they said no,” Shaw said on Twitter (with a few of his capital letters removed). “Why? Because they wanted to buy something that they could use to assert against someone else. So partnering with others & reducing patent liability across industry is not something they wanted to help do.”

Personally, I’m tempted to pull the car over and tell them both that if they can’t play nice, then neither of them gets to blog for two weeks.

Thanks, Netflix! You Too, Amazon! Why CBS Loves the Digital Rerun Business.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:20:23 +0000

Another data point for the “digital can be a really good thing for big media” argument: CBS says one reason it just posted a very nice second quarter is because of a Netflix deal which brings it new money for old shows.

CBS, which saw revenues jump up 8 percent, said the increase was “driven by” a 21 percent increase in licensing and distributing dollars, “which benefited from a new licensing agreement for the digital streaming of select library titles.”

Translation: “That $200 million Netflix deal we announced back in February, which lets us resell stuff we’re no longer putting on the air, is kicking in and paying off.”

There is more good news for CBS coming down the pike, as the results don’t include a similar Amazon deal, and another Netflix deal (for international), both announced last month.

Again, this is the best-case digital scenario for Big Media titans like CBS: The one where technology doesn’t carve up their existing business, but gives them a chance to sell old stuff (in some cases, really old stuff, like the original “Star Trek”) “over and over again,” in the words of CEO Les Moonves during today’s earnings call.

Asked who else might be willing to pay up for his re-runs, Moonves got more effusive. “[Satellite TV operator] Dish just announced today that they’re going to spend a significant amount of money buying content and libraries,” he said, adding that “we hear about Apple wanting to buy content, and Google. Et cetera, et cetera. And Microsoft.”

A slightly less enthusiastic version of the same story comes from CBS’ book division at Simon & Schuster: Revenue dropped 3 percent, as a boom in digital sales couldn’t outweigh a drop in print revenue. But because digital sales are more profitable than print, earnings moved up 12 percent.