Hasta La Gadget!

Barnes & Noble has reported Q3 2013 earnings for the fiscal three-month period ending January 31, with a loss of $0.18 per share on quarterly revenues of $2.2 billion. That’s down 8.8 percent from the same period last year, when B&N reported gains of $0.71 per share.

Net losses in Q3 totaled $6.1 million, a clear drop from net earnings of $52 million a year ago.

Analysts predicted revenues of $2.4 billion, and an EPS of $.54. Last quarter saw revenues of $1.9 billion and losses of $0.04 per share.

Q3 has been a messy one for the retailer, which started out as a college text book store. The holiday period, which is usually a sure spike for retailers, left Barnes & Noble with a 10.9 percent sales decrease on B&N retail and BN.com from the same time last year. B&N blames this on declining Nook hardware sales at its retail locations.

Reports are floating around that Barnes & Noble may spin out its Nook hardware business, or perhaps focus its OEM vision on partnerships with Microsoft.

Barnes & Noble denies the reports, with CEO William Lynch stating today that the company is adjusting the Nook strategy and righting the segment’s cost structure. But based on the widening losses compared to Barnes & Noble’s glory days, a drastic change could be needed.

The Nook segment had revenues of $311 million during the nine-week period ending December 29, which was a 12.6 percent decrease from last year’s holiday Nook sales. All in all, Q3 saw a 26 percent YOY drop in Nook retail.

Barnes & Noble announced on January 28 that it would shutter nearly 1/3 of its retail stores, bringing its total number of locations from 689 to between 450 and 500 over the next decade.

Luckily, digital content sales rose 13.1 percent over that same nine-week holiday period, indicating that a departure from hardware and a focus on digital products could be the saving grace for the company.

The company also said on Valentine’s Day that it expected the Nook business to post an increased full-year loss, exceeding the $262 million loss seen in fiscal 2012. Though, B&N also expected losses to be less than $3 billion.

Barnes & Noble is a leading retailer of both physical books and digital content. The company sells content for a number of digital reading devices including the Nook line of E-readers. Today Barnes & Noble has announced that the updated Nook app for Windows 8 computer users is now available to download.

The app was announced late last year, but users can now download the latest version of the app via Barnes & Noble. The updated app is designed to allow users to sign in and shop using their Microsoft account. This means that users of the app don’t need to sign in with separate credentials or create an account in advance.

The app provides Windows 8 users with a seamless experience allowing automatic access to the wide range of digital books, magazines, newspapers, and comics that Barnes & Noble offers. Content purchased using the Windows 8 app is stored via Nook Cloud. That gives access to all purchase content across a variety of devices.

Users who already have a Nook account can combine previously purchased titles and content purchased using their Microsoft account into one primary account. The Windows 8 app is available to download at no cost for all Windows 8 computers and tablets. The Nook library offers over 3 million books including 1,000,000 free titles.

[via Nook.com]

New Barnes & Noble Nook Windows 8 app now available is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you still love shopping for books by hand at your local Barnes & Noble, enjoy it while you can, because the company has announced that its cutting its store force by 30% within 10 years, lowering the total number of bookstores for the company down to 450 to 500 stores in the US. Right now, the company operates just under 700 locations, with a separate store chain of 675 college-focused stores.

CEO Mitchell Klipper confirmed the news today, saying that the company expects to close 20 stores per year on average. In the past decade, the company shut down approximately 15 stores per year on average, but they were also opening at least 30 stores per year in new locations. However, that process met a roadblock a few years ago. The company’s peak number of stores at any one time was 726 in 2008.

While the closing of 30% of its stores is certainly not good news, Klipper tries to see the good things out of the downsize. He says “it’s a good business model,” because “you have to adjust your overhead, and get smart with smart systems.” It’s certainly not what the company hoped for by any means, but Klipper says that business models change throughout the years and you have to learn to adjust.

Barnes & Noble’s brick-and-mortar store business has been drying up more and more as consumers shift toward Amazon and buying ebooks online, but Klipper is confident in his new business plan, and while the company is closing many of its stores, they’re expanding their digital book arsenal to make up for the loss.

UPDATE: We received word from a Barnes & Noble spokesperson about the future closings of their various stores, and they note that the company “has not adjusted its store closing plan whatsoever,” and that the numbers being reported “are consistent with analysts’ expectations.” The spokesperson mentioned that “in 2012, Barnes & Noble opened two new prototype stores and in 2013 plans to test several other prototypes, as well,” saying that they are “fully committed to the retail concept for the long term.”

[via WSJ]

Barnes & Noble to close 30% of stores within the decade [UPDATE] is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

2012 was quite a huge year for Android. We saw the jump from Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and then to version 4.2. Ice Cream Sandwich was a solid operating system, but Jelly Bean made it even better, adding new features like Google Now, better notifications, and even Photo Sphere. However, the software was merely just a vehicle for the hardware to ride on — the devices themselves were what really shined this year.

It was a huge year for Google, who completely revamped their Nexus lineup, and Samsung released more Galaxy devices than we can count on two hands. We also saw some new devices from HTC, Motorola, LG, Sony, and of course, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Let’s recap all the fun stuff that happened over the past 12 months in the world of Android.

Google

The Nexus line of Android devices from Google saw the biggest change this year. The search giant introduced their first ever tablets, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10, and also released a successor to last year’s Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus 4. The Nexus 7 has already proven to be one of the most popular Android tablets of all time, and the Nexus 10 features the world’s highest-resolution display of any mobile device with a whopping 2560×1600 resolution, resulting in 300 PPI.

At Google I/O 2012, the company also announced and later released the Nexus Q, a unique home entertainment device that integrates with Google Play and streams media to televisions and speakers from several different devices at once. However, the Nexus Q was eventually discontinued after only a few months due to lack of interest.

Samsung

2012 was also a huge year for Samsung. Their flagship Galaxy S III sold over 30 million units, thanks to its availability on most of the major carriers, including AT&T and T-Mobile. Samsung also released the Galaxy Note, a unique 5-inch, phablet-style handset for those wanting a large screen for increased productivity. They later released the Galaxy Note II with an even larger 5.5-inch display and an enormous battery.

Due to the success of the Galaxy S III, Samsung released the Galaxy S III mini in Europe, a smaller version of the company’s popular flagship handset. They also released several other specialty products, such as the projector-equipped Galaxy Beam, the Android-powered point-and-shoot Galaxy Camera, and the iPod Touch-esque Galaxy Player in both 3.6-inch and 4.2-inch flavors.

As far as their tablet business, Samsung didn’t make a lot of noise, but they released several solid Android tablets, like the Galaxy Note 10.1, and the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and 10.1.

ASUS

Other than partnering with Google to manufacture the Nexus 7, ASUS released a couple more Android tablets of their own, the Transformer Pad TF300 and the Transformer Pad Infinity — both are 10.1-inch tablets running quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processors with 4-PLUS-1 technology, and both received upgrades to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The Transformer Prime, while released towards the end of 2011, didn’t make a huge impact until 2012 rolled around, and it was the world’s first quad-core processor-toting tablet.

Be sure to check out our official [Tegra Hub] to see the full impact of NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 throughout 2012.

Amazon

This year from Amazon, we saw the company improve on their original Kindle Fire tablet by releasing the Kindle Fire HD in two form factors, 7 inches and 8.9 inches. Both are loaded with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Texas Instruments OMAP dual-core chipsets. The biggest upgrades from the original Kindle Fire, however, are the screens, which received a high-definition boost to as large as 1920×1200 on the 8.9-inch model (1280×800 on the 7-inch model).

Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble also implemented upgraded versions of their NOOK Tablet in order to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD. Both the NOOK HD and the NOOK HD+ are 7-inch Android-powered tablets and run off of Texas Instrument OMAP dual-core chipsets, with the HD+ running a slightly faster processor, increased storage, and a higher-resolution display of 1920×1280.

HTC

HTC had a big 2012. They released the DROID DNA, which comes with the first 1080p display in a smartphone and is the densest display in the world currently, with 440 PPI on a 5-inch screen. The company also released a brand new line of smartphones, known as the One series, that includes both top-tier handsets, as well as budget-minded devices. The company released the One S, One V, One X (and its successor, the One X+ — it and the HTC One X international version being the first smartphones in the world to carry the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core SoC), One XL, and the budget-minded One VX, as well as the mid-range One SV that was released in Europe.

Other handsets that HTC released in 2012 include sequels of the company’s Incredible and EVO line, the DROID Incredible 4G LTE and EVO 4G LTE, respectively, as well as the Desire C, Desire V, and Desire X — all three of which are budget-friendly devices that sport a lower-clocked processor, less RAM, and a smaller screen.

LG

LG outed several impressive devices this past year. They were the sole manufacturer behind Google’s Nexus 4, and while that was one of their most popular devices (and their most important for 2012), they also had a few others that stood out. The Optimus G is one of them, and it’s a powerhouse of a smartphone, with a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chip, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. The company also released some pretty stellar mid-range devices as well. The Spectrum, as well as the Spectrum 2, featured solid specs and performance at a lower price, and the company’s latest L-series phone, the Optimus L9, saw a sizable improvement over the L7 and other L-series devices released in 2012, such as the L5 and L3.

Other LG handsets released in 2012 include the phablet-esque Intuition, which sports a 5-inch display and an odd 4:3 aspect ratio that we’re not used to seeing in the mobile market. LG also outed the Lucid, a small budget-minded 4G LTE device that sports a dual-core Qualcomm processor and an impressive IPS LCD display.

Sony

We didn’t see a lot from Sony this year, but they did out a few of Xperia-branded smartphones and tablets that kept them in the spotlight throughout the year. The Xperia TL was Sony’s first-ever smartphone built upon Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chip, and it’s the same device featured in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall.

Other smartphones that we saw this year from Sony included the Xperia ion, Xperia S, and the Xperia U. The Xperia S was launched at CES 2012 and was the company’s first Sony-only smartphone after acquiring Ericsson’s stake in Sony Ericsson at the beginning of the year. The Xperia ion was also launched at CES 2012, and it features a 4.55-inch display running Qualcomm’s last-generation Snapdragon S3 chip.

As far as tablets, Sony outed the Xperia Tablet S and the Tablet P. The Tablet S packs in a NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip and runs off of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The Tablet P, however, is one of Sony’s most unique offerings, featuring a clamshell form factor, making it easier to slide in out of a pocket, but it ended up suffering from flimsy build quality, lack of software support, and ultimately lacking a lot of gaming options.

Motorola

Motorola picked up where they left off at the end of 2011. They improved on their DROID RAZR handset by introducing several new versions of the device. The DROID RAZR HD featured a larger, higher-resolution display, while the DROID RAZR MAXX HD included almost-identical specs, but sported a much larger battery for those wanting to go longer without having to plug into a wall.

The company also outed a budget-friendly and smaller DROID RAZR M that featured a 4.3-inch display, but stuffed it into a small form factor for those who still favor the smaller devices of yesteryear. Other notable devices that Motorola released in 2012 include the Atrix HD, DROID 4, and the mid-range and oddly-named MOTOLUXE.

Android Hardware Rundown: 2012 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Short of an iPad, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and Nook HD+ are about as good as it gets in the 10-inch media tablet space, so we thought it only fitting to Fly or Die these bad boys side-by-side.

Though John and I did disagree a bit on which is best, we can both agree that either of these media tablets is an excellent buy for the avid reader and movie lover. Both have excellent displays — the Nook HD+ technically has a slightly higher ppi and laminated screen, while the Fire HD offers stereo speakers.

In almost every way, though, it comes down to software.

Truth be told, Barnes & Noble has come along way in terms of bringing a solid UX to the table, and has done so with Personalized User Profiles and Nook Today (which offers a list of daily tidbits like weather, recommendations, etc.).

Features like Scrapbooking take that simple progress and accelerate into the lead where magazine readers and catalog enthusiasts are concerned. The HD display paired with the interactivity of over 100 supporting catalogs and the ability to save your faves make the Nook HD+ very well suited to anyone who prefers the steady stream of magazines and catalogs over novels, movies, and other one-offs.

The Nook HD+ is also cheaper, starting at $269 as opposed to $299.

If, however, you would rather have a pseudo reader tablet (with the priority on e-reading, and not surfing or email) the Fire HD 8.9 may be the way to go. It too has personalized user profiles for family use, and comes with its own unique features like X-Ray and WhisperSync. It’s great for watching movies, and offers an excellent reading experience too.

All this requiring that you are new to the space and don’t already own a library full of content in either Amazon’s or Barnes & Noble’s cloud.