4 ms·

There IS one kind of tablet people want besides an iPad, as proved by sales numbers: The Color Nook According to various recent reports, Apple has about 10% s

There IS one kind of tablet people want besides an iPad, as proved by sales numbers: The Color Nook According to various recent reports, Apple has about 10% share in ebook sales, Barnes and Noble 25%, and Kindle over 60%. Don't know the latest sales figures, but as of March 28, 2011, 3 million Color Nooks were shipped, according to Digitimes: Barnes & Noble already takes delivery of 3 million Nook Color e-book readers, say sources Yenting Chen, Taipei; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES [Monday 28 March 2011] Barnes & Noble has taken delivery of close to three million Nook Color e-book readers from its production partner, according to an estimate by sources from the Nook Color supply chain. With a clear differentiation to Apple's iPads in display size, targeted market and pricing, the Nook Color, priced at US$249, has actually taken up over 50% of the iPad-like market in the North America market, indicated the sources. Sales of the Nook Color topped one million units in the North America in the fourth quarter of 2010 and reached 600,000-700,000 units a month during the January-February period of 2011, the sources noted. Barnes & Noble outsources the production of the Nook Color e-book readers to Inventec, noted the sources, adding that Inventec has landed tablet PC orders from Hewlett-Packard (HP). EDIT: formatting

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
r00fus 15y ago
So you're calling the Nook Color a tablet? I'm not sure that's a fair representation of the device... it's cheap, a decent e-reader, and hackable to run at least Froyo (from last I checked). In comparing the e-reader to the tablet, the Nook does indeed blur the lines, but it's resistive touch and e-ink display combined with hackery to run a full touch OS means it's really in a league all it's own. Perhaps this is the recipe to success for the upstarts. Ignore the "X market" as that means X is commoditized. Differentiate by seeing the pricing and/or vision gap and dive into it deftly. A footnote: comparing "shipped" vs. "sold" numbers is a bit facile. Lots of difference there. It'd be nice to see definitive "sold" B&N details, but they're not sharing.
- FilterJoe 15y ago
  Agreed on shipped vs. sold (Though I DID have a conversation 2 months ago with a B&N employee - says they went out of stock a couple times). Agree also about the recipe for success: Find a niche and optimize for it. If even Apple doesn't yet know what their tablet is for, how are we supposed to know what their inferior knock-offs are for? But it sure is obvious what a Color Nook is for. It does have an app store but the apps are for the most part related to reading, as you'd expect. The fact that the Color Nook can be converted into the least expensive half-decent Android tablet is just an interesting aside. EDIT: typo

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

r00fus 15y ago

So you're calling the Nook Color a tablet? I'm not sure that's a fair representation of the device... it's cheap, a decent e-reader, and hackable to run at least Froyo (from last I checked). In comparing the e-reader to the tablet, the Nook does indeed blur the lines, but it's resistive touch and e-ink display combined with hackery to run a full touch OS means it's really in a league all it's own. Perhaps this is the recipe to success for the upstarts. Ignore the "X market" as that means X is commoditized. Differentiate by seeing the pricing and/or vision gap and dive into it deftly. A footnote: comparing "shipped" vs. "sold" numbers is a bit facile. Lots of difference there. It'd be nice to see definitive "sold" B&N details, but they're not sharing.

FilterJoe 15y ago
Agreed on shipped vs. sold (Though I DID have a conversation 2 months ago with a B&N employee - says they went out of stock a couple times). Agree also about the recipe for success: Find a niche and optimize for it. If even Apple doesn't yet know what their tablet is for, how are we supposed to know what their inferior knock-offs are for? But it sure is obvious what a Color Nook is for. It does have an app store but the apps are for the most part related to reading, as you'd expect. The fact that the Color Nook can be converted into the least expensive half-decent Android tablet is just an interesting aside. EDIT: typo