Kobo, maker of eReading devices, rolled out a limited edition Aura HD ereader earlier this year, and a couple months later had a different device appear in an FCC filing. As of today, the company’s lineup has been expanded with three new tablets, two of which harbor Tegra processors, as well as an Aura e-ink […]
Barnes & Noble has backtracked on plans to axe internal development of new NOOK tablets, promising continued R&D into both black & white and color models, with at least one new NOOK for the holiday 2013 season. The about-face, announced during B&N’s dreary quarterly results, comes after the company said back in June that it […]
While consumer electronics sales hit peaks and valleys, when a manufacturer like E Ink Holdings reports a significant loss, it’s time to stop and pay attention. The display manufacturer reported a 46% decline in sales over the past year, with a net loss totalling $33.6 million to boot. While reporting a loss isn’t all doom […]
Barnes & Noble has slashed the price of its NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight ereader, trimming the illuminated e-paper slate to under $100, and prompting speculation that a successor might be close at hand. The NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight is now $99 through B&N’s official store, down from the $119 the company had been […]
E-readers, such as the Kindle and the Sony Reader, were a novelty five years ago. But they are already on their way out. Display manufacturer E Ink Holdings reported its quarterly earnings and sales are down 46 percent year over year with a net loss of $33.6 million. It isn’t the first net loss, but it is the biggest one in four years. More importantly, the company announced on its conference call that it expects e-reader sales to range between 10 and 15 million for 2013 — flat compared with last year.
Overall, e-paper displays represent 70 percent of E Ink’s revenue. The vast majority of those displays go into e-readers. It has the advantage of consuming very little power and being easy on the eyes. Yet, it’s slow to refresh and black and white, making it exclusively useful for e-readers, smartwatches and other edge cases.
One of the reasons behind this quarter’s downturn is attributed to the fact that ereader companies are now updating their products during the third quarter, one quarter later. In other words, it suffers from seasonality. It’s not entirely true as the Kindle e-readers were updated during Amazon’s September event. Amazon still leads when it comes to market share.
E Ink is confident that sales will be much better as we get closer to the holidays, but still wants to diversify its offering to rely less on ereader sales. At the same time, the company relies on international growth in Asia and Russia to boost its display sales.
But the future of e-readers looks gloomy. Sales in North America and Europe are probably not as good as E Ink expected. E-readers were great devices when there wasn’t any cheap 7-inch tablet. But now, people can buy a Kindle Fire for $159 or a Nexus 7 for $269. The reading experience is worse on a tablet, but carrying multiple devices represents a cognitive burden. Moreover, e-readers were always a niche product. Market saturation of this small segment could come sooner than anticipated.
Kobo debuted its limited edition Aura HD ebook reader back in April, and we got our hands on it shortly after. Now a new device from the company has surfaced in a batch of leaked images, and though we don’t know the final name of it yet, it is similar in design to the Aura from the front. While not much is known about it, some details have surfaced via an FCC filing.
You can see the full gallery of images below, which gives us a pretty good look at the slate from all sides. They first surfaced over at the German website Lesen, which refers to the device as the Kobo N514, which is likely not its final name. By the looks of it, this will be a follow up to its Kobo Glo ereader, though in terms of design they differ greatly.
Netronix, maker of the device, reportedly requested that the documentation related to the Kobo device be kept on the down low until August 30th so that “sensitive business information” was kept from the market, so – pending any more leaks – it’ll be awhile before we get certain additional information on the slate. There are some specs, however, that were revealed by the FCC filing.
Reportedly, the Kobo N514 will feature a 6-inch display, possibly with a resolution of 1024 x 758 pixels, which would put it in line with the Kobo Glo. Likewise, the ereader is said to offer wireless connectivity in the form of 802.11 WiFi, and to feature a 1500mAh battery, which is a jump from the Glo’s 1000mAh offering.
Based on this information, users won’t find much difference between this and its predecessor. However, keep in mind that there’s reportedly an embargo in place on information, and so this could change once we know more about what the slate offers. Until then, you can check out some of Kobo’s other offerings in our Kobo tag portal.
VIA: The Ebook Reader
SOURCE: Lesen
Kobo N514 ereader images surface showing new device is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
The recent announcement by Barnes & Noble that it would discontinue its Nook tablets marked the exit of what once promised to be a strong rival to Amazon, at least among bibliophiles. Barnes & Noble’s entry into the tablet market took place amidst an annual game of leapfrog with its internet-based rival. Surviving for three iterations, the color Nook devices were products that had a particular focus on media consumption — especially reading — and eschewed open access to apps.
Filed under: Tablets
I was speaking with a friend in the CE industry a few months ago about Nook, and he mentioned an interesting bit of apocrypha. Back when the e-reader race was still an actual competition, Wal-Mart was exploring entering the space with a device of its own. Everyone they talked to in the industry recommended they just buy Nook. However, at the time, the company wasn’t for sale.
Now it probably should be.
As CEOs crumble and demand flattens for Nook hardware products, it’s clear that something needs to change. Three years ago I wrote that the Kindle won. In the intervening years I have rooted hard for Nook, and I have had excellent experiences with all of their products. The Nook Simple Touch is one of my favorite readers and I have seen no material difference between the Kindle and Nook bookstores. In short, Nook shouldn’t have to win… but now it has to lose.
As the company begins unwinding itself from the mess of competition, it should look for a partner that can put it in the remaining millions of homes that don’t have a tablet or e-reader. And that number is fast dwindling. Amazon got into millions of homes over the past few years and, one presumes (they don’t make numbers public), so did Nook. But e-readers, as standalone devices, are now niche, and I’d wager even Amazon is having a hard time selling them. However, if Nook and, say, a retail partner like Wal-Mart could get inexpensive readers in front of folks who may have missed the boat, they could still stem the tide of bad news. However, Nook would no longer be a standalone brand, stalwart against the world. It would, in effect, turn the Nook brand into a badge for OEMs to license. It would, in the end, destroy the brand even as it saves it.
I don’t want Nook to go away. While I could tell early on that it would be a hard road for Barnes & Noble and that Amazon was already a few steps ahead, it’s hard to wish ill on a company that has helped turn reading from a paper-based pursuit into an online habit. The irony is that, before all this, the e-reader helped to gut the thing that birthed the Nook in the first place. I doubt many of us have set foot in a bookstore in the past few months (or years), and that was Nook’s doing. While I don’t want to get too sentimental, it seems that this war is over, as Arnold once said to his love, “the world, which seems/ To lie before us like a land of dreams,/ So various, so beautiful, so new,/ Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;/ And we are here as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/ Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Barnes & Noble has again slashed NOOK prices in the UK, following its admission last month that it is clearing stock of the ereading tablets after deciding to instead license out the brand in future rather than build its own models. The NOOK HD will be offered from £99 for the 8GB model (or £129 for the 16GB version), £30 cheaper than B&N’s last promotion.
As for the NOOK HD+, the bigger version of the Android slate with a 9-inch display, that also gets a price cut. The 16GB model is £149, again £30 cheaper than the last promotion (and £80 less than the original RRP), while the 32GB version is £179.
Barnes & Noble is calling this round of discounting a “temporary” one, though given the troubles the NOOK range is facing we’d be very surprised if more price cuts didn’t follow on afterwards. The NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight is on sale a £69 in the UK, with the non-illuminated version even cheaper (and out of stock at B&N’s official UK store).
NOOK is feeling the pressure from Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad/iPad mini, forcing drastic measures. The company saw sales of the division – covering hardware, content, and accessories – plummet 34-percent in the most recent financial quarter, and as a result opted to split the range.
In future, B&N will continue to produce the e-paper based NOOK models itself, but will leave NOOK Android tablets to third-party manufactures. The NOOK brand itself will be licensed out, as the company tries to slim its development costs.
NOOK HD gets another price slash as B&N tries to shed stock is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Barnes & Noble saw NOOK sales plummet 34-percent in the last quarter, and will turn instead to licensing the NOOK brand to future ereading tablets so as to minimize its losses, the company has confirmed. B&N will continue to make the NOOK Simple Touch and Glowlight models in-house, but the eventual replacements to the NOOK
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
