Barnes & Noble is wisely hedging its e-reader bets. With the iPad getting its last-minute prepping for presale tomorrow, the company announced that it will offer a free Nook app for Apple’s tablet expected to drop around the iPad’s launch on April 3. The application will give iPad users access to the million + titles of books, newspapers and magazines available from Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore.
The latest tech news by way of job posting relates to Amazon’s continual improvement upon the Kindle. The retailer appears ready to greatly improve upon the rudimentary Web browsing experience offered on the Kindle and recently posted a job listing within its Lab126 e-reading division for a browser software engineer. The hire is tasked with helping to “provide an innovative Embedded Web Browser.”
Here’s a great way for Amazon to keep the Kindle competitive once the iPad hits the market: give it away for free. A piece in TechCrunch this morning says that the retailer wants to do just that, albeit to select customers.
Citing a “reliable source”, Michael Arrington says that Amazon is planning on rolling out a new program that will deliver Kindles to the doorsteps of all Amazon Prime subscribers–free of charge. As the thinking goes, the top-tier customers are likely to make up for the cost of the Kindle in e-books purchased over time. The move would also help prevent these loyal customers from unleashing their e-reading dollars elsewhere.
Right before Apple brought its iPad to the surface, Amazon announced that it would be offering apps on the Kindle, a move that was obviously meant to position it head to head against the iPad. Of course, Amazon’s device lacks pretty much everything that the iPad offers– outside of e-reading capabilities.
According to a New York Times article, Amazon is preparing to upgrade the Kindle to better position it against the iPad. The retail and e-reading giant reportedly purchased Touchco, a NY start-up that specializes in touchscreen technology. Amazon will roll its new company into its Kindle hardware division.
Amazon has officially lost the battle with publisher Macmillan. Last week, the company was at odds with the publishing house over its desire to raise the price of Kindle e-books. Well, Macmillan won and Amazon announced that it will acquiesce to Macmillan’s desire to raise the price on Macmillan e-books. Macmillan will get its wish of pricing between $12.99 to $14.99. It threatened to stop selling new books on Amazon if the company didn’t agree to the hike. Amazon typically charges $9.99 for new releases and bestsellers.
The iPad may be grabbing all the headlines this week, but according to some accounts, the Kindle is still pulling in all the sales. TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon has officially passed the 3 million mark in terms of Kindles sold. The blog cites a source close to Amazon who provided the figure. The company made the milestone last month amidst holiday traffic.
The figure comes as a surprise to the industry since analysts were expecting Amazon to hit 2.5 million Kindles sold sometime around December…of 2010. So either this new number is off or Amazon enjoyed a very successful 2009. The company previously announced that it enjoyed record Kindle sales in November.
The competition between Apple and Amazon appears to be fully heated. Amazon is preparing the launch of apps for the Kindle e-reader (though it’s avoiding the term apps and sticking with “active content”–much catchier) , clearly aiming at competing with the almost-here Apple tablet, which is expected to offer e-reading, multimedia and other applications.
Amazon will allow software developers to create apps, which will be made available through the Kindle store later in the year. The apps are expected to come in a variety of price formats including one-time fee apps that require under 100 kilobytes per month, subscription-based apps and small, free apps.
The e-reader has some real holiday magic up its sleeve. Remember when you were a kid and you could just see the books waiting under the tree thinly disguised in slim, rectangular packages? Unless you were an avid reader, those packages regularly got pushed aside for the bigger, more exciting gifts that hopefully held something electronic under their crinkly, bowed grasps.
Now that the e-reader is taking over literature as we know it, the book is no longer the dullest, most obvious gift of the pack, but a sleek piece of technological innovation–a gift that kids, young and old, can actually get excited about. And sales are proving that consumers are loving it.
It’s no secret that this is going to be a holiday season in which many an e-reader finds its way under the Christmas tree. It’s also not a secret that despite the press garnered by competitors like the B&N Nook, the Kindle is going to dominate the field thanks to prepared, established production/distribution from Amazon. So it’s no surprise that Amazon has announced that the Kindle enjoyed record sales in the month of November.
