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Barnes & Noble Pulls Nook from UK

March 4, 2016 By Troy Rubenson Leave a Comment

Nook and e-books from Barnes & Noble will no longer be available in UK

STATES CHRONICLE – Barnes & Noble seems to have been on a rough path lately, with sales dropping dramatically. They are a chain of bookshops which would be quite successful if it weren’t for Amazon that managed to take over the market, especially when it comes to books and e-book readers.

Amazon has the Kindle, in all its forms, as the most popular e-reader in the world. Barnes & Noble tried to compete with Amazon by launching Nook, also a great and popular e-reader, but even so, they were unable to surpass the giant retailer and its Kindle.

Since they figured out there is no point to keep competing with Amazon when it comes to e-readers and also when it comes to e-books, Barnes & Noble has decided to withdraw their Nook e-readers as well as the e-books from the UK market.

They have officially announced that the company will stop selling digital content such as videos, magazines, fiction and non-fiction starting with March 15. You can purchase and download any content until then, either on you Nook or on your iOS or Android device via the Nook Reading App.

After March 15, all Nook books and other digital content will be available on Sainsbury. They also have an app for e-books that works on any Nook. The option of synchronizing Nook libraries will no longer be available starting May 31.

So far, it is not known how the Nook e-readers will be supported, but it is very likely that Barnes & Noble is working on it and will announce their users of any changes. Although the company did not give a reason for the decision of leaving the UK e-book market, it is quite clear that the competition with Amazon might have caused them trouble.

Amazon offers a wide variety of e-books and e-book readers and Kindle seems to be the preferred brand. Besides, the online retailer earned its customers many years ago as the first online “bookshop” and the first company to launch an e-reader. Their target public was won over long before, Barnes & Noble brought us the Nook and before any other companies such as Sony, could think of competing with Amazon in the field of e-readers.

Image source: www.bing.com

Amazon Launches its Kindle MatchBook Service

October 30, 2013 By Janet Vasquez Leave a Comment

Kindle MatchBook is a service offered by Amazon that has been launched just today. The idea behind this service is for Amazon to offer a digital version of the books that their customers have in their possession. The talk was for Amazon to start with a listing of 10,000 copies of books. What was a big surprise has been the number that they have listed in their service, which stands at a whopping 70,000 titles.

People who have availed of the Amazon site for purchasing their books from 1995 would now find matching books when they log in to the Amazon Kindle MatchBook service. Their previously ordered manual book turns out to be a futuristic action with the service coming out with the digital edition of the matching books today. Readers need just to connect to the service from whatever device they have like Android or iPad or a Kindle eReader.

There are few other interesting features that readers would find on the Kindle MatchBook service site. There is WhisperSync and X-Ray which has been seen on the Kindle eReader for those who are aware. These functions help in searching for the title most suitable for the particular reader.

The books that are being listed at the MatchBook site comprise of both free and paid titles. The maximum that the users are likely to be charged for the corresponding eBook versions is $2.99 USD. The free books are those that have been in the public domain or Amazon has been giving them for free in the past as well.

A visit to the site and checking out the various books and details would be very much a wise decision for avid readers.

Kindle Smartphone by Amazon For Free?

September 10, 2013 By Jack M. Robinson 1 Comment

Word on the street is that Amazon will be offering its Kindle smartphone for free. Sounds too good to be true though that is what the Wall Street Journal would like to believe Amazon is up to with its smartphone venture. The online retailer has for long been linked to developing a smartphone of its own though things have been kept privy so far.

So much that no one is absolutely sure if Amazon is indeed into developing such a device though there have often been rumors of Amazon trying out a glasses free 3D display for its smartphone.

However, the latest rumor is a bit too far stretched as it even claims there will be no carrier obligation as well. Amazon is known to play the price card really well though doling out a smartphone complete free is a completely different ball game. Carriers always subsidize their smartphones though there is always a 2 year contact to agree to.

Let’s not forget it was Amazon that had created the budget tablet segment with the Kindle Fire tablet range. The Kindle Fire was the first tablet from a reputed company to sport a price tag as affordable as $199, a price point that many a manufacturer followed suit with.

Other bits that can be speculated is that the Amazon smartphone will run an Android version though it will be safe to assume it will be heavily worked upon to be aligned with the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon will surely like to recover the cost of manufacturing the device by selling any of its services. That is exactly how Amazon has been able to make money out of its tablet venture though applying the same strategy with its smartphone offering could be far too risky. Sure there will be no dearth of takers for an Amazon smartphone when offered free though it will have to reach a really wider user base to recover the costs.

What do you guys think of it? Will Amazon really offer a smartphone completely free?

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