NOOK Tablet

Barnes & Noble has introduced a new NOOK tablet to take on Amazon's cheapest Kindle offering. The item, much like the most basic Kindle Fire, is priced at $49.99 USD and features a 7-inch display. B&N says the new offering is a full tablet in the grandest sense of the word, including access to the Google Play Store and all the Android apps on it. That may make it more appealing than the Kindle Fire, which provides access to Amazon's Appstore.

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This week the folks at Barnes & Noble announced that they'd be buying back the shares of Nook they'd sold over the past several years. This began with an October 2012 investment by Microsoft of $300 million dollars to create Nook Media LLC. Two months later, British education and publishing company Pearson purchased a stake in Nook for $89.5 million. Both companies have now sold their shares back to Barnes & Noble, and Barnes & Noble once again owns 100% of the ereader brand they created in the first place.

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After sourcing outside entities to make their hardware, Barnes & Noble is now spinning of the Nook division from the company proper. They’re going to pursue having the Nook division spinoff into a standalone entity, effectively creating two companies. One has the potential to sustain the troubled waters ahead, while the other may not.

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NOOK users may be avid readers, but they may also need their daily dose of inspiration, whether that'd be ideas for DIY projects or just entertaining photos. Barnes & Noble announced today that Pinterest is now available for NOOK devices, allowing you to browse through creations and other pieces of inspiration right from your NOOK.

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Barnes & Noble has revealed NOOK Video, its upcoming movie and TV show store for NOOK devices, smart TVs, tablets, and smartphones. Set to launch in the US this fall, with a UK debut by the holiday season, NOOK Video will offer both streaming and download options, integrating with the NOOK Cloud for viewing on multiple devices.

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Barnes & Noble’s Nook tablets are limited in their mapping abilities, currently relying on Google's web interface to access any kind of maps. That’s set to change today, as the company has announced a partnership with skobbler that will see the Nook tablets gain the ability to natively search and view maps. It’s an interesting move from Barnes & Noble to avoid using Google’s services, although we imagine the advent of the Nexus 7 and its low price point has made the company’s options clearer.

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Display quality is playing an increasingly important role for tablets, with manufacturers now moving towards higher resolution screens or adding other features that add to the overall experience. CNET has heard from a reliable source that Barnes & Noble is planning a shake up with its Nook tablets, saying that the company is aiming to introduce a new 7-inch tablet with “revolutionary screen technology.”

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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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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.

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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.”

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It appears that what first appeared on the first of this month in the Barnes & Noble store archives has suddenly become a whole lot more real: NOOK headphones! These phones at the moment only have an image and a code-name attached to them, but the details can be gleaned relatively easily. What we're almost certainly looking at here is the book store's first step into the music sales business in a way that's not just hard-backed CD cases and audio books.

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