NEW YORK — A new HD tablet is set to shake up the tablet marketplace this holiday season. Barnes & Noble has announced it has two new versions of its popular Nook tablet on the way. Look for a better high def screen and hardware upgrade. The bookseller’s move heightens the already intense tablet wars heading into the holiday season.
Barnes & Noble said Wednesday that its new Nook HD will come in two sizes, one with a 7-inch screen (measured diagonally), starting at $199, and one with a new 9-inch diagonal screen, called the Nook HD+, starting at $269.
In addition to the new HD screen and a lighter body, Barnes & Noble is also increasing the services the Nook offers, adding a video purchase and rental service, allowing users to maintain different “profiles” and making it easier to browse titles in its book and magazine stores.
New York-based Barnes & Noble, the largest traditional U.S. bookseller, has invested heavily in its Nook e-reader and e-books. In its most recent fiscal quarter, sales of digital content surged 46 percent, but revenue from devices dropped partly due to lower prices. Nook prices in the May-July period were about 23 percent lower than a year ago.
The company is seeking to offset tough competition from online retailers such as Amazon.com, as consumers increasingly move away from traditional books and DVDs to electronic books and streaming video.
The Nook HD is an upgrade to the hardware and services offered by its previous tablets, the Nook Tablet and Nook Color, which Barnes & Noble is phasing out. The company will continue to sell its smaller black-and-white e-reader, called the Nook Simple Touch, for $99, and a backlit Nook Simple Touch for $139. The Nook HD runs on Google’s Android 4.0 system and includes Barnes & Noble’s own app store and browser.
Tablets are -once again- expected to be hot items this holiday. The new Nooks come on the heels of Amazon.com’s announcement earlier this month that it will offer four new varieties of its Kindle, including a high definition version of its Kindle Fire tablet with an 8.9-inch diagonal screen, which starts at $299. That compares with Apple Inc.’s iPad with a 9.7-inch diagonal screen and $499 starting price.
Apple’s iPad is the most popular tablet, and that is not expected to change. Seven out of every 10 tablets sold in the second quarter were iPads, according to IHS iSuppli. Meanwhile Amazon.com has a 4.2 percent share of the tablet market, while Barnes & Noble has a 1.9 percent share, according to iSuppli.
Even so, the category is growing rapidly. An estimated 112.5 million Americans, one-third of U.S. adults, are expected to have tablets by 2016, according to Forrester Research.
And tablet makers are jockeying to gain share on Apple. On specs alone, the new Nook presents a tough choice for consumers seeking a cheap option to the iPad this holiday, analysts say. The 7-inch Nook HD is slightly lighter and narrower, with a sharper display than the similarly priced 7-inch Kindle Fire.
“If the decision the consumer is making is whether to buy based on hardware, these new Nooks will beat out Amazon,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey. “But that’s not the decision every consumer is going to make – hardware is only as good as the services the hardware enables.”
So far, Amazon offers more services, McQuivey said, with a bigger app store, and more extensive video library, not to mention Amazon’s vast product offerings and its Amazon Prime free-shipping service.
In an attempt to measure up, Barnes & Noble is launching a video service this fall that lets users buy and watch movies and TV shows on their mobile devices and televisions. The offerings will come from major studios including HBO, Sony Pictures, Viacom and Warner Brothers. Scrapbook and catalog browsing features have also been added.
One wild card working in Barnes & Noble’s favor this holiday: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target, increasingly threatened by Amazon’s online retail operations, won’t carry the Kindle. The retailers will sell Barnes & Noble’s Nooks, as well as other tablets like the iPad.
“This is going to be a lot of fun to watch over the next year,” McQuivey said.
The new Nooks are available for pre-order online and in stores beginning on Wednesday and will begin shipping in late October and begin arriving in stores in early November.
Here’s a look at some of the hardware specs for Barnes & Noble’s new Nook HD and HD+ tablets, compared with Amazon.com’s new Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad3.
-Nook HD
Maker: Barnes & Noble Inc.
Price: $199 for 8 gigabytes of storage; $229 for 16 gigabytes
Screen size: 7-inches at the diagonal
Display resolution: 1440 x 900 pixel resolution
Software: Android 4.0 OS
Storage: 8 to 16 gigabytes, and expandable memory with a microSD card
Thickness: .43 inches
Weight: 11.1 oz
Processor: Dual-Core 1.3 GHz OMAP4470
Battery life: Up to 10.5 hours of reading and up to 9 hours of video
Connectivity: Wi-Fi
Camera: No camera
-Nook HD+
Maker: Barnes & Noble Inc.
Price: $269 for 16 gigabytes of storage; $299 for 32 gigabytes
Screen size: 9 inches at the diagonal
Display resolution: 1920 x 1280 pixel resolution
Software: Android 4.0 OS
Storage: 16 to 32 gigabytes, and expandable memory with a microSD card
Thickness: .45 inches
Weight: 18.2 oz
Processor: Dual-Core 1.5 GHz OMAP4470
Battery life: Up to 10 hours of reading and up to 9 hours of video
Connectivity: Wi-Fi
Camera: No camera
– Kindle Fire HD
Maker: Amazon.com Inc.
Price: $199 for 16 gigabytes, $249 for 32 gigabytes
Screen size: 7 inches at the diagonal
Display resolution: 1280 x 800 pixel resolution
Software: Android 4.0
Storage: 16 or 32 gigabytes.
Thickness: .4 inches
Weight: 13.9 oz
Processor: Dual-core 1.2GHz OMAP4460
Battery life: 11 hours continuous use
Connectivity: Wi-Fi
Camera: Front facing camera
-Kindle Fire HD 8.9 inches
Maker: Amazon.com Inc.
Price: $299 for 16 gigabytes, $369 for 32 gigabytes, $499 for 4G LTE service
Screen size: 8.9 inches at the diagonal
Display resolution: 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution
Software: Android 4.0
Storage: 16 or 32 gigabytes, or 32 or 64 gigabytes on 4G device
Thickness: .35 inches
Weight: 20 oz
Processor: Dual-core, 1.5GHz OMAP4470
Battery life: N/A
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, or 4G LTE data service
Camera: Front facing camera
-iPad
Maker: Apple Inc.
Price: $499 to $829
Screen size: 9.7 inches at the diagonal
Display resolution: 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution
Software: Apple
Storage: 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes
Thickness: .37 inches
Weight: 1.44 lbs
Processor: Dual-core Apple A5X
Battery life: Up to 10 hours of web use on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music
Connectivity: Wi-Fi or 3G data service
Camera: Front and back facing camera