Wall Street Journal:
Barnes & Noble Inc. has terminated its commercial agreement for its Nook e-reader with Microsoft Corp. , a move it said provides a clearer path toward the impending split of its business.
The bookstore retailer bought out Microsoft’s preferred interest in Nook for about $120 million in cash and stock, freeing the software giant from further investments in the business.
Barnes & Noble added it expects the planned split of its Nook Media unit from its retail stores to occur by the end of August, behind its initial projection for a separation by March. Ending the partnership would also make it easier for Barnes & Noble to sell the division if it chooses to explore that option.
Considering that Microsoft poured $300 million into the deal in the first place, with a commitment of another $300 million to stave off debt, I’d call this cutting your losses and moving on.
For those with an interest in such things, here’s a link to the Form 8-K filed by Barnes and Noble. The 8-K is required when a publicly traded US company has news of major financial impact, like the retirement of a CEO or an upcoming merger.
I guess Windows for Nook 8.2 Home and School Edition didn’t work out as well as planned.
I don’t follow ereaders much, but B&N and the Nook got my attention. There’s a B&N I’ve been in a few dozen times. Each time, all the Nooks have been broken… missing buttons, cracked screens. Twice, there’s been a salesman there desperate to get people to try a Nook. I don’t know how he manages, because they’re literally all broken. I couldn’t bring myself to feign enough interest to find out. Maybe he has one he brings for that purpose.
If one B&N is allowed to get that bad, even if all the others are not that bad there’s clearly no pride or lasting commitment to selling the things in a meaningful way.
Also, the build quality is clearly shit.
Our local store is generally well-set-up for examining Nooks. We got a cheap one a couple of years ago to test ePubs we were working on. The build quality was—and is—fine, but we both seem to slightly prefer the way the Kindle’s hardware controls are set up.
The alternative is the display wasn’t protected well and small human monkeys were allowed to bash them until they broke.
That’s probably more likely. 🙂
Of course. Reminds me a bit of the Best Buy I was in just a couple of hours ago. What a sad and lonely town.