The presentation of the new Nook Color has just finished and I’m having a glass of white wine at the press event. I videoed their presentation, but the bandwidth isn’t high enough for me to upload it from here – it would take too long. I’ll put it up for you when I get home. The touch-screen unit will cost $249 and will ship on November 19 and be in stores by late November.

Here are my general observations:

It’s a really cool unit and will be especially nice for children’s books and magazines. It is the type of thing that will make a great impulse buy when it shows up in their store kiosks. I think it will sell very well. Given this price range, it certainly undercuts the Samsung tablet in the ereading arena.

The color is outstanding – crisp, sharp and clear. It uses a new technology LG LCD screen and gets 8 hours of solid reading on one charge of its 4010 MaH battery. It has 1024×600 resolution and 16m colors. I asked why they didn’t use PixelQi or Mirasol technology for battery life. They answered that they looked at these technologies but they are not ready for prime time yet. First, they are just too expensive, second they don’t have the sharp, saturated colors that user will want and, third, they couldn’t handle the zero air gap B&N wanted for the touch screen.

Aside from selling it their own stores it will be sold by Best Buy, Walmart and be an exclusive in Books a Million.

In the Q&A the following was also brought out:

B&N has found that ebooks and pbooks don’t seem to compete. Nook buyers have actually increased their physical books purchases by 21%;

They think that there is a lot of life yet in e-ink and will continue to sell the e-ink model – which will get a major software update next month;

At launch, which will be in mid-November they will have the largest selection (over 100) of newspapers and magazines of any ebookstore;

The unit is Android based and B&N will have its own, curated, app store. They currently don’t anticipate the unit connecting to the “regular” Android app store.

The unit has WiFi, but not 3G. This is because the current Nook has 3G and also it helps the keep the price of the Nook color down.

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12 COMMENTS

  1. I am thrilled that BN continues to be serious in this market. To date, my BN eBook sales (not including Fictionwise) are roughly equal to my Kindle sales (not including Mobipocket). Which makes me very happy as the last thing any publisher wants is for one distributor to achieve dominance.

    This isn’t much more than I paid for my Kindle a couple of months ago.

    Rob Preece

  2. I’m a strong fan of b&w e-ink Kindle 3 and Kobo, each for their own reasons. At $249 for colour, B&N has hit another really nice sweet-spot. Other Android tablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab are running $600 so, while perhaps more capable, are way out of the price range B&N has managed. On the other end of the scale, the NookColor clearly cleans the clock of the Literati, even if it is $90 cheaper, as the NookColor appears to deliver the goods.

    My main hesitation — apart from the fact that B&N doesn’t sell outside of the US so all of this academic anyway — is the small form factor. I don’t see the need for color with books (ie novels) — it’s clearly aimed at newspapers and magazines and comics. But for that content, 7″ is pretty tiny: that’s 50% of a newsstand magazine making already small type much smaller. And if you are talking about magazine content and then just reflowing .. well, the charm of the magazine is lost and then one wonders how important color is in that case.

    But … looks really cool and the price tag sounds like a winner.

  4. Yes, it play video.
    Flash is coming with Android 2.2.
    Real.Soon.Now.
    It looks good. But despite that seet screen, I’m not buying. Sorry. No-go.
    If it’s supposed to be a reader, it needs physical paging buttons.
    You’d think they’d notice that the market has voted touchscreens on readers as non-compelling. (Sony notwithstanding.)

  7. Looks cool, and the price is nice, and I can tell you from experience reading on an iPad that physical controls aren’t necessary if things are done right. BUT a small nit to pick – Zinio has hundreds of magazines already, so 100 magazines and newspapers doesn’t sound like much. But well see.

  10. It’s a mini-tablet. Everything I’ve read and seen about this device tells me they handed Amazon the dedicated ereader market. The nook 2 is nice, but I don’t think it occupies the same space as the Kindle.

  11. I agree with Katherine’s comment: Magazine availability and format are important, and I haven’t seen enough about either yet.

    Zinio’s passable, but a lot of magazines (including a number I subscribe to) aren’t in there yet. Zinio allows you to save magazines (in PDF, but at least they’re saved) in case the service goes belly-up someday… and we all know the longetivity of most of these delivery systems, don’t we?

    When they start talking formats and catalog, I’m ready to listen.

  12. Am I the only one baffled as to why Books a Million will be selling B&N hardware now? Great for B&N but what the heck is Books a Million getting out of this? Is this indicative of something more eg will B&N run their ebookstore, somewhat similar to what Kobo does with Borders? Very curious…

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