Will Samsung Save the Nook?

Will Samsung save the Nook?

The good news from Barnes & Noble for the first quarter of Fiscal 2015 that ended August 2, 2014, was that book retailer cut losses from $87m to $28m compared to the same period a year ago. The bad news was that overall revenues had dropped 7% from $1.33b to $1.22b. Worse yet, Nook sales were off a staggering 54%.

Does that signal the end of Nook?

Barnes & Noble launched its first Nook reader in November 2009 to compete with the Kindle. A year later B&N released a color tablet called the Nook HD+. In both releases, sales and performance exceeded all expectations. Consensus was the Nook device would allow B&N to finally challenge Amazon in the digital book distribution world. A few tech journalists were impressed enough to predict the Nook HD+ could compete with the iPad. But that was way back in the day when the tablet was still in its infancy.

The reality was B&N is a bookseller, not a tech company. Apple and a host of competitors upgraded and line-extended the now ubiquitous tablet to meet consumer wants and needs and emerging uses, all of which made the Nook a quaint little reading device, albeit with a touch screen and in full color, but not a technological triumph. Not even two infusions of cash by Microsoft – with partnership agreements that never quite worked for either party – turned the Nook division around.

Will Samsung turn the tide for Nook with the introduction of the sleek new Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook? (An incentive of $250 in free downloads doesn’t hurt!)

After all Samsung is Apple’s toughest competitor in the smartphone and tablet arena in the US, and is ahead of Apple internationally. Samsung brings a very strong brand name and reputation in a category Barnes & Noble wasn’t known for and couldn’t have competed in longterm. B&N can now focus on selling books and better appeal to the book reader who wants to see B&N succeed in order to save the last national brick-and-mortar retail footprint – and make sure Amazon faces real competition.

The first thing to establish is that people probably aren’t going to buy the Samsung Nook because it is an eReader. They will buy it if and only if it is a great tablet. So is it a great tablet? I think so but I’ll let you peruse the technology review sites to make your own determination of that.

I can say confidently the Samsung Nook costs less and has a better screen than the iPad, but of course, many people buy Apple products because they have invested in the Apple ecosystem with their music purchases, for example, and of course, the overall simple functionality and synchronization of all devices in the Apple arsenal. That cuts both ways, however, as Google’s “open” Android system that Samsung uses continues to dominate and gain world market share. I was in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in August and Samsung was dominant in the smartphone market everywhere I looked. By a wide margin. (The screen size debate has been put to bed in that economic powerhouse corridor. Chinese students and businesspeople think bigger is better.)

The newly released iPhone 6 and Plus have been smash hits and helped Apple regain some immediate US market in the smartphone world. The number I’ve seen bandied about is a 2.6% increase after less than two weeks. But with Samsung introducing the Galaxy Note 4 this month and the Galaxy 6 to follow in January, it will be several months before we can see if Apple has reestablished an upward trend line in market share.

One thing is for certain. Nook can’t put all their eggs in the Samsung basket to insure its future viability and success. They need to take a page from Amazon’s strategic playbook in offering a great Kindle app that can be downloaded on any device. Apple had – and still has plans – to build a robust digital bookstore in the same way they took the music world by storm. But they’ve learned the hard way that Amazon doesn’t give up ground easily.

Back to the topic at hand. The Samsung Nook offers a huge assurance to B&N digital book buyers they didn’t have before. Even if the Nook division were to ever be killed – and surely there would be a buyer, right? – the Samsung Nook would stand on its own with everything it offers as a world-class tablet, and it would not be obsolete as an eReader. All the customer would have to do is download the Kindle or another e-reader app.

So will Samsung save Nook?

I think it’s a great move by B&N and a great partnership for both companies in the wars they are waging with some industry behemoths.

I’m cheering for Nook to bounce back. But there are too many variables to make a bold prediction.

I’ve been in publishing long enough to be medium, device, and company agnostic. What matters most to me is the content, whether it be published using paper-and-ink or digitally or audibly and then sold in any format by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, an independent bookstore or author or organization, online, in a brick-and-mortar setting or anywhere else in the world books are sold.