It’s almost Mother’s Day, and so we’ve taken a look through the products we’ve most loved over the past few months and have put together a guide for what’ll work best for you to give your mom this weekend! It’s just that simple, folks, and it’s time to get on board with electronics for moms. We’ll move through a few different categories and, by the end of the guide, you’ll know exactly what Mom will want most – or what’ll be best to get her, at least!
There's no denying that Apple's version of what everyone else in the world calls a tablet has been one of the greatest successes in gadget history, the iPad today being shown by IDC as having a 68% share in the market for tablets and tablet-like devices. The IDC group shows the Apple worldwide tablet market share increasing on the whole from 54.7 percent in the holiday quarter at the end of 2011. These numbers have been shown to be sucking the blood of the Amazon Kindle fire market, it falling steeply from a 16.8 percent share in the fourth quarter of last year to a rather scary 4 percent here in the first quarter of 2012.
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This week we're to understand per an announcement from Target themselves that they'll begin dropping ereaders from their stock starting this spring. The first of these will be the Kindle with the rest of the ereader line Target carries likely to follow. The motivation for this dropping could be one of three things, two of them being big-name brands you've certainly heard of Target tying with before.
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Barnes & Noble has been doing very well its Nook line of the readers. The company CEO, William Lynch, is talking about the future of the Nook and giving hints about what we might see in the future for the line. One of the things that he says is coming to the company the rear term is NFC technology.
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Happy Tuesday, everyone. It's the beginning of the month. We're always halfway through the year and the tech news wires are cranking as strong as ever. First off, an update to the LG/Windows Phone story - LG denies ditching Windows Phone. And speaking of mobile platforms that people are running from, RIM guarantees Blackberry 10 devs $10,000. So how about that other non-Apple mobile platform? Yeah, it's doing pretty well. Comscore pumps Android to 51% market share.
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Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch has today all but confirmed that the Nook hardware will never carry Windows 8 or any version of Windows in the future. Speaking with Fortune Magazine, Lynch let it be known that the primary reason Barnes & Noble and Microsoft are pairing up is their ability to bring the Nook ebook software to "millions of screens and windows." The Nook ereader hardware, on the other hand, will continue to run the open-sourced software known as Android through the future.
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Though it might seem like the obvious next step in line for Microsoft to push Windows 8 to the Nook hardware after they invested millions into Barnes & Noble's newly formed NewCo for the hardware and subsequent apps, it's simply not in the cards that tablet. With Barnes & Noble having already invested heavily in the idea that their bookstore and app environment works with Android - not exactly like Google would like it, but still - they're not likely to move with Windows 8 for future ereaders any time soon. Instead it's the apps we'll be seeing integrated for Nook, the Barnes & Noble library of content, and Windows 8-toting hardware galore.
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Barely was the e-ink dry on Microsoft and Barnes & Noble’s $300m NOOK agreement when pundits were questioning the wisdom of adding Amazon to the software company’s existing roster of big-name rivals. Microsoft is already under attack in mobile and computing, so the commentary went; throwing one of the biggest retailers around into the mixture was at best foolish and at worst evidence of Microsoft spreading itself thin when it needs to be extra lavish with its strokes. That analysis is wrong, though. Make no mistake: Apple, not Amazon, is in Microsoft’s sights today.
Now that Windows 8 is nearly upon us and the ereader world has not faded away as it so many times was said to be doing, Microsoft is investing in the ebook industry. You've seen the news this morning that Microsoft is investing in Barnes & Noble for $300 million USD, then there's slightly newer news that they're also dropping $180 million for revenue sharing on an upcoming Nook app for Windows 8 and an additional $125 on Barnes & Noble's new subsidiary "NewCo" which will house Nook. Microsoft is buying its future in the easy-to-use electronic books business.
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Another fine morning has arrived and gone with much to be excited about in the coming weeks, not least of all Alienware computers coming with Ivy Bridge! The most epic cartoon series of all time South Park has gone on-demand in the UK. Wind power turbines are in a bit of trouble over bad research - no good for those fighting to keep them alive. Microsoft has purchased a bit of Barnes & Noble and may be making some Windows changes to the NOOK - not now, but someday soon!
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Microsoft and Barnes & Noble may have co-launched a digital NOOK business together, but the two firms say it's still too soon for talk of Windows 8 on NOOK-branded tablets. Speaking on an investor call about the deal, Microsoft's Andy Lees said neither company would be talking product roadmaps today, and pointed out that Microsoft has not done a teardown on the NOOK devices to see where they are in terms of Windows 8 requirements.
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Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have today announced a joint partnership to form a new subsidiary. The new subsidiary doesn’t yet have a name, but is said to bring together the digital and college sides of the Barnes & Noble business. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in exchange for a 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own the remaining 82.4%, with the subsidiary having an “ongoing relationship with the company’s retail stores.”
