Barnes and Nobel Nook

I had about 30-minutes to play with a Barnes and Nobel Nook today.

Summary: A step above the Kindle, interesting business model, DOA.

The Nook is a Kindle form factor device. The display might be a little smaller. It has a second color touch sensitive display that you use to control the thing. I thought the touch display was of average or low quality (that is, nothing like an iPhone). From a hardware execution point of view the device is a logical evolution beyond the kindle (like a + 0.5, not a + 1.0 for sure).

The business model is interesting. They have way more books than Kindle and if you visit one of their stores, you can browse anything in the catalog on your device before you buy (I don't know how this works). The especially interesting thing is that you can loan your purchases to other people and they can read the book you bought. It's a one-user-exclusive-license (just like a paperback) except that the license automatically reverts back to you after 14-days. I think this is very cool. As the market fragments it becomes less valuable but they are in a good position with all of their content.

Interestingly the one book I searched for was not available in eBook format.

The Nook is back-ordered until "at least February". This is a colossal screw-up on their part (or it means they only made a hindered or something).

I can't imagine that the Nook won't be eclipsed when Kindle 3.0 happens (I have no info). The real reason it's DOA is because B&N (1) doesn't do hardware (but neither does Amazon) and (2) customers will continue to see that the business model isn't right -- not enough sharing and no community.

This business needs a Netflix/Zune model (all you can eat for cash/mo) with Apple quality hardware.

Dan