Barnes & Noble is readying a mystery product that could lead to an expansion into audio. A product page for a Nook Audio has shown up on Barnes & Noble's own online store with an OE250 model name. AS the name isn't connected to existing Nooks and hasn't cleared the FCC, it may be a speaker dock, wireless speakers, or headphones for the Nook Color or Nook Tablet.
Apple's long rumored smaller iPad was given a tentative production timeline in a rumor late Wednesday. Sample units were supposed by Digitimes' part supplier sources to be going out for testing, but production was still some distance away. It wouldn't start production until summer "at the earliest," according to the tip.
Apple was the lead mobile PC vendor in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the rest of the year, at least when including tablets, an NPD DisplaySearch report shows. The company shipped just under 23.4 million MacBooks and iPads in the fourth quarter, and more than 62.8 million for the entire year. NPD observes, though, that almost 80 percent of Apple's numbers were iPads, estimated at 18.7 million in Q4, and 48.4 million for the whole year.
Barnes & Noble looks set to tackle the hot-selling Amazon Kindle Fire head-on by releasing a reduced storage capacity version of its Nook Color sequel, the Nook Tablet. According to the The Verge, it has received documentation purported to be from Walmart showing that it is set to release an 8GB model at 12:01 AM on Wednesday, February 22. Currently, the 16GB version of the Nook Tablet retails at $249, suggesting that Barnes & Noble aims to get close to, equal, or beat the pricing of the Kindle Fire at $199.
Friday signaled the second anniversary of the iPad's introduction and what has since been interpreted as the start of a shift in the entire computing space. Apple's tablet was unveiled this day in 2010 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco by its late co-creator, Steve Jobs. It would only go on sale April 2, but it proved to be polarizing from its unveiling, even for Apple loyalists.
Barnes & Noble is giving readers $50 off the regular price of a Nook Tablet if they buy the device in conjunction with an online subscription to People magazine. Individuals who commit to a $10 per month annual subscription to the interactive digital edition of the publication can purchase the Nook for $200. The normal price for the device is $250.
Barnes & Noble has just revealed that it has added new official apps to its Nook Tablet and Nook Color devices. They include the popular Words with Friends, with Twitter and Plants vs. Zombies coming soon. Others are promised for early next year as well.
Barnes & Noble has reportedly closed a loophole that had allowed Nook Tablet owners to load apps from third-party sources. The company has begun circulating a software update, version 1.4.1, that is said to prevent the tablet from loading new apps that haven't been obtained through the official Barnes & Noble app portal, however users report that third-party apps installed before the update arrived remain on the devices.
Barnes & Noble is believed to have received more than a million Nook Tablets from the company's manufacturing partner, Inventec, unnamed sources from component suppliers have told DigiTimes. The company is said to have expected to ship 800,000 tablets before the end of the year, suggesting holiday sales may have proven stronger than initially anticipated.
The iFixIt crew has just obtained the Nook Tablet conducted its traditional teardown in search of its repairability and parts. The full color e-book reader has a unique built-in design element that is the carabineer clip on its corner. The microSD card slot is right beside it and it's surrounded by two small circles that hide screws.
Apple will probably overtake HP as the top PC maker by the second half of 2012, claims research group Canalys. The forecast includes tablets, however, a product category most analysts make a point of separating from PCs. Unlike regular computers, media tablets tend to be extremely limited, dependent on app stores for software and frequently missing front-end filesystems and removable storage.
Keeping up the tradition of hacked Nooks, XDA-Developers forum contributors have posted a full root for the Nook Tablet. A combination of USB drivers as well as either a batch program or a command line sequence will let users freely install or remove apps on the Android 2.3 slate. The hack, zergRush, doesn't unlock the bootloader and thus won't take completely new firmware like CyanogenMod.
The lead analyst for mobile at PC Mag, Sascha Segan, confirmed that the Nook Tablet made official earlier this month will only allow 1GB of its 16GB of built-in storage space for content not purchased from Barnes & Noble. Segan is flabbergasted by this move, and rightly so, as Barnes & Noble CEO Bill Lynch himself called the competing Amazon Kindle Fire "deficient as a media tablet" because of its meager 8GB of storage space.
Amazon will fill a conspicuous gap in the Kindle Fire's newsstand Wednesday based on leak. Staff at Time Inc. told AllThingsD that, after negotiations that ran past the Kindle Fire's launch day, the key magazines the publisher has on virtually all tablets will reach Amazon's Android device. Fortune, People, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, and Time itself would be part of the launch.
Netflix on Tuesday at last brought its app to all Android tablets (Android Market). Previously limited to a handful of Lenovo tablets and a few others, it was now ready for any Android 3 tablet. Both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, as Android 2.3 devices, could already get the app.
Amazon revealed on Friday that the Kindle Fire will have access to both Hulu Plus and ESPN when it launches, putting it over the Nook Tablet. During the initial app announcement, the movie and TV show streaming service wasn't mentioned, though other premium services such as Netflix and games from EA and Zynga were. This now gives the Fire the edge over the Nook, as Amazon has its own video and music store, while Barnes & Noble doesn't.
As expected, Barnes & Noble unveiled its Nook Tablet at a special event held in the company's flagship store in New York City. Electronista had a chance to take an early look at the new device, which is marketed as the best contender in the market for seven-inch tablets.
Barnes & Noble at its special event confirmed the rumored launch of the Nook Tablet. The seven-inch sequel to the Nook Color is now much more of a media tablet with a dual-core processor and a doubled 1GB of RAM. The speed upgrade lets the Android 2.3 device handle 1080p video along with new Hulu Plus and Netflix apps and newer games.
