It’s on! NOOK Simple Touch challenges Kindle
“But that is the risk which the strongest always faces in accepting challenges. If he wins, it is no virtue. If he loses, it is a cosmic joke for three thousand years.”
–Omne
The Fate of the Phoenix (a Star Trek novel)
written by Myra Culbreath and Sondra Marshak
Clearly, there has been a competition between the NOOK and the Kindle since the former was released.
Since then, though, Barnes & Noble has changed their marketing company…and “this time, it’s personal”*. 
When the new NOOK Simple Touch (NST) was introduced, the Kindle was specifically mentioned. They talked about reflash (the redrawing flash between “pages”), and the number of buttons.
More interesting to me has been the print ads I’ve seen…I still get paper magazines, although I’d love to have a good digital substitute.
The
has a picture of the first ad I saw.
The headline is
Goliath, meet David
and it shows the NST and an attributed quotation about the superiority of the NOOK over the Kindle (from ZDNet).
I’ve seen the second one in a current magazine, with this headline:
“Books didn’t need buttons for five centuries. Why start now?”
That also has a picture of the Kindle and the NST…and the same ZDNet quotation. The ads, in fact, look very much the same.
The second ad, of course, is a bit silly. The first NOOK had a keyboard…and the current one has buttons. Yes, buttons plural: I’ve seen them suggest strongly that it only has one, but there are physical “page turn” buttons. You could also say, “Books didn’t need built-in dictionaries…” or “Books didn’t need virtual keyboards…”
Still, silly doesn’t mean ineffective in advertising.
It’s also not going to hurt that, for the first time, a NOOK outscored a Kindle at
It only beat it by one point, and they say that if the Kindle public library lending is well implemented, that could put the Kindle back ahead.
That doesn’t matter, though…marketshare is more dependent on perception than on the facts.
I’ve noticed more people finding this blog looking for NOOK and Kindle comparisons lately.
The link I put into an MSNBC video comparison between the two devices
msnbc.msn.com/id/42218772/vp/43274166#43274166
is my third most clicked link of the month.
My feeling is that marketshare leaders lose their positions not by underestimating their competitors, but my overestimating consumers’ brand loyalty.
Do I think Amazon is going to do that?
No, I don’t think that’s likely, personally.
They don’t stand still. They care customercentric. They innovate.
I do think Barnes & Noble is going to increase its marketshare with the NST. It’s a bit like innings in a baseball game, and B&N is up right now. ;)
However…
There are two interesting factors right now.
Amazon still seems to be fighting the iPad in their ads (they talk about the ability to read the Kindle in bright sunlight). That does help against the NOOKColor, but not the NOOK.
That’s going to make features a tough fight…you have perceived competitors with opposite features.
Amazon is going to have to think about the branding…
The other important piece is that Amazon is likely to introduce a tablet (or two) this year. If that means they don’t also introduce a new Kindle, that would let B&N gain ground in the dedicated EBR race.
I think an Amazon tablet could do very well…but it’s not going to go to number one in tablets (that’s still going to be the iPad (2)), I think).
There’s a risk in diversifying.
Barnes & Noble has done a great job in securing a place in the e-book world. Their growth in that area has been fast and big. Partially, that’s due to overall growth in the market, but they’ve also really committed to it (even choosing not to pay dividends to stockholders this year so they could have more resources for the battle).
Competition is good. It drives innovation (technological and otherwise, like service), partially by convincing stakeholders that it’s necessary. It’s hard to get the Board to invest money and take chances f you are on top and unchallenged.
I’ll predict right now that Barnes & Noble is going to have good things to say about NST sales before the end of the summer.
What do you think? Have perceptions started to shift? Is Kindle no longer generic for EBR? Can B&N continue to grow when their current economic push stops? Is a touchscreen Kindle inevitable? Feel free to let me know.
* “This time it’s personal” is worth…oh, fifteen trivia points. 
Remember that you only get trivia points if you don’t look it up…you have to just know the answer. What’s the source of that line? If you know, comment this post. It might be tougher than I think it is, but we’ll see.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
June 20, 2011 at 11:07 am |
Hi Bufo: Thanks for your great blog. I noticed something today that I am not sure you mentioned.
My NYT had not delivered today to my K3 so I went to MYK page and there was a “deliver past issue option” maybe I missed it but I have never seen this before and understood that if you were not able to download a daily on the day you could never get it. Now you can backtrack and get past two weeks of, at least the NYT. Very exciting as I camp a lot in area with no cells and it breaks my heart to miss the Sunday NYT. Thanks, Kathy
June 20, 2011 at 12:06 pm |
Thanks for writing, Kathy!
The ability to get back issues (within the “rolling current” set of issues) has been there from the beginning, I believe. I think the rolling current on the NYT is seven issues (the current and six back issues), so as long as people on vacation without wireless could get to a computer once a week, they could get their issues.
There are two things which have changed:
Those back issues can now be sent to other compatible devices on the account….and for some magazines, that now includes Android devices. Amazon has said they are going to extend the reach of newspapers and magazines to other reader apps.
The other, and I suspect this is the factor here, is the redesign of the Manage Your Kindle page. It probably made the option more obvious. I wrote about that here (mentioning the “send back issue” option):
http://ilmk.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/amazon-redesigns-the-manage-your-kindle-page/
As someone who trains people on technology, I’m acutely aware of the gap between what a technology can do, and what the end users know it can do. Many times, I see people requesting features for the Kindle (sometimes in all capitals and with multiple exclamation points) that it already has. That’s a gap that comes about, I think, because technology companies don’t spend as much time, money, effort, or focus on how the end users interact with the product as they do developing the functionality of it. Functionality without awareness (and comfort) doesn’t have much of a purpose in the market.
June 20, 2011 at 3:21 pm |
the one thing none of the reviews or ads mention is Amazon’s superior customer service. I hear horror stories about B&N’s customer service; I hear raves about Amazon’s.
I would never buy a Nook because I object to my credit card number being used for so many things, including being part of the DRM – nobody mentions what happens when your credit card expires (the Nook turns into a brick) or what might happen if you change your credit card number – do you lose access to books purchased on the old credit card? I just don’t know.
I do know that I can detach my Kindle from a credit card at Amazon and keep using it with side-loaded books. And my Kindle doesn’t segregate side-loaded books into a smaller section of memory, and my dictionary still works with those books, which it doesn’t on either the Nook or the Kobo.
Consumers Reports dropped the ball on this review.
June 24, 2011 at 7:11 pm |
becca,
Actually the B&N flavor of DRM is the most liberal form of DRM out there. It doesn’t require signing up for an Adobe account, and you can read it on an unlimited number of devices without using ADE to side-load it (provided the reading systems use a recent version of the Adobe RM SDK). With the older form, you need to side-load all DRM content with ADE or vendor-specific software. Nook doesn’t require that except when dealing with the ‘classic’ Adobe DRM (e.g. for library books).
The credit card number is only used (as a password) when you download an ePub file for use on a 3rd party reader. The first time you open it, it prompts for B&N user name, and the credit card number used to purchase is the password. These credentials are stored as a hash, meaning it is impossible for someone to extract them from the file or reading system and use it. The reason a credit card number is used is to discourage casual sharing of the file, since people will be understandably reluctant to share their credit card number with anyone other than people they trust a great deal.
If the credit card expires, it doesn’t matter. You can still download anything from your B&N library to your nook without needing to know it, and you can download ePub files and read on non-B&N readers as long as you keep track of the numbers you used to purchase books on B&N.
By contrast, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to recover my Adobe password to authorize a new system for Adobe DRM. It is a pain having to keep track of accounts and passwords, particularly ones you don’t use very much, and more is definitely not merrier. So DRM is going to be inconvenient either way.
The partitioned memory of Nook has its tradeoffs. Most people will find the user storage sufficient, and those that don’t can purchase additional, inexpensive storage (4GB microSD is less than $10). Nook treats user content as Read Only, so you can’t accidentally delete what might be your only copy of an ebook. Likewise, having wireless downloads in a hidden partition means you can’t accidentally delete your B&N content when you connect to a computer.
Nook’s dictionary does work with side-loaded content, you’ve conflated it with Kobo Touch, which does not currently allow this.
I haven’t any customer service stories about B&N of my own, and hope never to have to call them about anything, given their negative reputation. Amazon CS has a well deserved positive reputation that correlates with my experience. If that is all that mattered, everyone would purchase a Kindle. But everyone has different requirements.
June 21, 2011 at 1:04 am |
I had to look it up. I think it is from jaws 2 in about 1997. Love your blog. I have nooks now and a kindle. Prefer the nook color.
June 21, 2011 at 1:23 am |
Thanks for writing, Linda!
Thanks for the kind words!
Hey, no looking up the trivia points questions.
In this case, that’s okay…because that’s not the right answer. The Jaws 2 tagline was a classic, and gets parodied quite often: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” Jaws 2 was 1978, I think, following Jaws in 1975.
June 24, 2011 at 6:22 pm |
I’m finding the Nook STR to be a worthy companion to my Kindle. I’d prefer to have a single device that combined the best features of each, of course, but for now I find them complementary:
- Kindle for the great content, ability to send 3rd party content wirelessly, lower ebook prices, higher quality selection (spam notwithstanding), TTS, functional web browser, much better ecosystem (albeit a somewhat ‘closed’ one), more predictable PDF viewing.
- Nook for reference material (computer technology books, footnote heavy non-fiction, etc.), because of the much more fluent navigation, library books, and as a reference device for ePub authoring and experimentation.
Along the way, hard decisions will need to be made about which format to invest in, in terms of purchase. In a sense it doesn’t matter, since I rarely read things more than once, but I do prefer the generally more capable formatting of ePub, while Amazon seems to be more tuned in to the needs of readers and continues to deliver great solutions. Hopefully the next Kindle will have a touch screen and add ePub support as well!