Is Barnes & Noble's Nook losing the e-reader wars to Amazon's Kindle franchise?
In a holiday sales statement issued Jan. 5, the bookseller suggested it would absorb deeper-than-expected losses over the course of its fiscal year. "The change in guidance is due primarily to a shortfall in the expected sales of Nook Simple Touch, as well as additional investments in growing the Nook business," it read, "such as advertising to support new products and international expansion in the back half of the year."
Overall, Nook unit sales increased 70 percent year-over-year, with sales of the full-color Nook Tablet apparently exceeding expectations.
Moreover, Barnes & Noble is considering a spin-off of that Nook business, although it cautioned in the statement that there is no timetable for the review, and the Company does not intend to comment further regarding the review. Discussions about expanding the Nook's presence into international markets are apparently under way with unnamed publishers, retailers and technology companies.
Contrast that with a December statement from Amazon, in which the online retailer claimed sales of its Kindle devices had topped 1 million per week. "We've already sold millions of units, and we re building millions more to meet the high demand," Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, wrote in a Dec. 15 statement. Kindle Fire sales increased week-over-week for each of the past three weeks.
If sales of Amazon's gray-scale Kindle e-reader have softened in recent months, the company has so far declined to reveal that in any sort of public statement. Over the holidays, Amazon claimed, the Kindle Fire became the top-selling and most-gifted product in its store, while sales of Kindle books between Black Friday and Christmas Day rose 175 percent year-over-year.
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Barnes and Noble Considering Nook Business Spin-Off
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