Barnes & Noble is set to release a new black-and-white e-reader with a glowing backlit screen on Wednesday, as the bookseller enters the holiday season with declining sales and a cloudy digital future.
The new Nook, with a sharper display and lighter weight, is an update to a device released in 2012 that was meant for nighttime reading.
Barnes & Noble executives said that despite the perception of simple e-readers as transitional products, they believe there is still demand for them as more consumers shift to multifunction color tablets.
“Black-and-white e-readers aren’t growing the way they were three or four years ago,” Michael P. Huseby, chief executive of Nook Media and president of Barnes & Noble, said in an interview on Tuesday. “But for our particular market, our customers who visit our stores and really value Barnes & Noble as a brand, this is a product they really value.”
The device will appear just before the holiday season, when publishers and booksellers depend on a major boost in sales. It will cost $119, similar to the Kindle Paperwhite that appears with advertising on the screen.
Mr. Huseby said there were no plans for Barnes & Noble to release a new color tablet by the end of the year. “That does not mean we won’t do so in the future,” he said. “We’re being more measured in terms of how we pace the production of devices.”
Barnes & Noble is the country’s largest bookstore chain, with 674 retail stores.
James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said he believed that the new Nook was “spectacular,” with a sleek design and superb battery life.
But the long-term viability of Barnes & Noble and its Nook business could be a major obstacle in the mind of consumers who are weighing whether to buy one of the company’s devices.
“If you were just engineering a device that you wanted people to fall in love with, then yes, it’s a great device,” Mr. McQuivey said. “But the bigger problem is, will people perceive that Barnes & Noble as a company will be around to fulfill the promises that that device makes? It’s a shadow that hangs over the entire Nook enterprise right now.”
Another problem, Mr. McQuivey said, is that the previous generation of devices is not obsolete.
“Probably most of the intended target for the devices already have another device,” he said. “The urgency is not there because the old devices are still very good.”
Allen Weiner, an analyst for Gartner, said that Barnes & Noble was compelled to release a new device that would “get them in the spotlight.”
“This represents, hey, we’re still here, and we’re still relevant,” he said. “This is a logical step in their evolution.”
The new Nook, with a sharper display and lighter weight, is an update to a device released in 2012 that was meant for nighttime reading.
Barnes & Noble executives said that despite the perception of simple e-readers as transitional products, they believe there is still demand for them as more consumers shift to multifunction color tablets.
“Black-and-white e-readers aren’t growing the way they were three or four years ago,” Michael P. Huseby, chief executive of Nook Media and president of Barnes & Noble, said in an interview on Tuesday. “But for our particular market, our customers who visit our stores and really value Barnes & Noble as a brand, this is a product they really value.”
The device will appear just before the holiday season, when publishers and booksellers depend on a major boost in sales. It will cost $119, similar to the Kindle Paperwhite that appears with advertising on the screen.
Mr. Huseby said there were no plans for Barnes & Noble to release a new color tablet by the end of the year. “That does not mean we won’t do so in the future,” he said. “We’re being more measured in terms of how we pace the production of devices.”
Barnes & Noble is the country’s largest bookstore chain, with 674 retail stores.
James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said he believed that the new Nook was “spectacular,” with a sleek design and superb battery life.
But the long-term viability of Barnes & Noble and its Nook business could be a major obstacle in the mind of consumers who are weighing whether to buy one of the company’s devices.
“If you were just engineering a device that you wanted people to fall in love with, then yes, it’s a great device,” Mr. McQuivey said. “But the bigger problem is, will people perceive that Barnes & Noble as a company will be around to fulfill the promises that that device makes? It’s a shadow that hangs over the entire Nook enterprise right now.”
Another problem, Mr. McQuivey said, is that the previous generation of devices is not obsolete.
“Probably most of the intended target for the devices already have another device,” he said. “The urgency is not there because the old devices are still very good.”
Allen Weiner, an analyst for Gartner, said that Barnes & Noble was compelled to release a new device that would “get them in the spotlight.”
“This represents, hey, we’re still here, and we’re still relevant,” he said. “This is a logical step in their evolution.”