Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Tech
-
Grifters Increase Their Internet Attacks
5/16/13 -
Bullies Turn Cyberspace Sour
5/11/13
Amazon and Apple dominate the e-reader market. But Microsoft and Barnes & Noble are teaming up to make a serious run at the leaders. Microsoft is investing more than $600 million in Barnes & Noble's efforts to launch a digital book and textbook subsidiary called Newco, and to help the bookseller to expand its online business globally.
In return, Barnes & Noble will create a NOOK e-reading app for the new Windows 8 tablet and PC operating system and for smart phones running Windows Phone 7. The deal also settles a patent dispute between the companies.
The arrangement helps fund Barnes & Noble's efforts to compete with Amazon's Kindle business, which accounts for 60 percent of the e-reader market. Meanwhile, Microsoft wants to give Windows a better chance of competing with Apple iOS and Google Android as an e-reader operating system.
Here's where it gets really interesting: Would Microsoft and Barnes & Noble come up with a Windows-based NOOK tablet to go head-to-head against the Kindle Fire, which runs on Android? Neither company has committed to it—but they haven’t ruled it out either.
—Larry Greenemeier
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
See what we're tweeting about
12 Comments
Add CommentWhile I really enjoy my Kindle, and also take great advantage of Amazon's ability to aggregate retail into a single site with high reliability and efficiency, I think this move by B&N with Microsoft will be great for the industry and push all parties to continue to improve their offerings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm just not sure why this is a subject for SciAm.
Well put.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wouldn't be surprised to find here a competitive assessment of HBO vs. Showtime sometime soon...
My wife got me a Nook Tablet for my birthday and I love it. It has plenty of storage with a SD card slot to boot and is less DRM encumbered than the Kindle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's nice. What's DRM?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDigital Right Management. It is software that is suppose to prevent piracy and ties the content you buy to the device you purchased it on. It is a failure of a technology and has turned into a albatross for the publishing industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is nightmare story on a DRM provider going broke and all the customers losing the ability to decrypt and read their e-books:
Ebook DRM provider goes dark, the books you paid for disappear:
http://boingboing.net/2009/01/08/ebook-drm-provider-g.html
For a good overview of the situation take a read of this article:
How DRM weakens publishers' negotiating leverage with retailers
http://boingboing.net/2012/04/02/how-drm-weakens-publishers-n.html
Thanks - I get it now. BTW, its actually Digital Rights Management, but you pointed me in the 'right' direction...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood move on the part of MS? MS invested in Nokia to push Windows 8 OS to a Nokia smart phone and now Nokia's stock has been relegated to junk status.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMS invests in Nook so the Nook runs Windows 8? My guess is B&N will be junk soon as well.
Bringing MS on board is like asking a mortician to liven up a party.
@Larry W,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNook runs on Android.
The discussion, not the article, highlights what I think is one of the primary problems with e-books. They can just evaporate, due to circumstances completely beyond their owner's control. I agree that they can store a lot of searchable information compactly, but this is a somewhat small consolation, in my opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA paper book is nearly as portable, far more durable, completely self-powered, does not require software upgrades or network connections, and is far simpler to browse.
When you buy a book, you do not buy temporary revocable access to the material, subject to certain byzantine covenants and restrictions, as well as unseen future economic and technological factors.
What you buy is a full, true copy of the material, which you can use, destroy, store indefinitely, reread, or sell at will (once, anyway). You are most definitely not buying access - that usually comes free at the local library.
If e-books prevail, they will be a great tool for those who would exercise control of our access to information, either for commercial or totalitarian reasons.
I'm not sure what the solution is - clearly e-books are here to stay, in one form or another. Perhaps as a society, we need to figure out an e-book standard, make it open-source software, as difficult to monopolize or censor as possible, and mandate that all books electronically published for profit also be made available in the open format for school and library use. PDF and other proprietary formats won't cut it.
I empathize with your comments, even though I'm not using an e-reader. I was confused by your last comment though. While in principle proprietary formats work against open access, Adobe makes their PDF reader freely available, allowing unrestricted read access. Through licensing (I presume), creation of PDF files is now commonly available from many vendors' authoring applications. So, why the knock on PDF - are e-reader apps using it to restrict access?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a Nook, tablet, just for the last couple of weeks and was going to see if I could get SA on it, but haven't as yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a Nook, tablet, just for the last couple of weeks and was going to see if I could get SA on it, but haven't as yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this