Nook Tablet Beats Expectations, B&N Considers Nook Spin-off

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Barnes & Noble announced via a press release today that sales of its Nook lineup, including the new Nook Tablet, the older Nook Color, and the Nook Simple Touch E-Ink e-reader, were up 70 percent over last year due in part to strong performance by the Nook Tablet. Sales of the Nook Simple Touch were lower than expected, however, which Barnes & Noble attributes to a "customer preference for color devices."

Because of this generally strong performance, the company is considering spinning the Nook unit off into a separate business. If it happens, Barnes & Noble cautions that such a move would only come after an evaluation process of indeterminate length. Whether it's separated or not, B&N expects its Nook business to continue growing year-over-year both in the United States and abroad. While all of these sales numbers look good for Barnes & Noble, neither they nor Amazon (nor other e-reader outfits, like Canadian company Kobo) release hard sales figures for any of their devices, making it difficult to see how their sales stack up to one another.

The Nook Tablet, which includes a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 SoC and 1GB of RAM, sells for $249 and competes primarily with Amazon's Kindle Fire and other inexpensive 7" Android-powered tablets.

Source: Barnes & Noble





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