Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Microsoft has an extended history of supporting bitter rivals -- even people who have long publicly disparaged the corporate, offering funds to Nokia, Corel and, most famously, Apple. It also has an extended history of supporting e-reading. Before ending development last year, the corporate offered its Microsoft Reader software for roughly a decade -- first on handheld devices using Windows CE and Windows Mobile and in a while desktop Windows. Those two traditions intersected yesterday as Microsoft invested in a brand new Nook e-book business designed to compete better against Apple and especially Amazon.com.
It is a good bet that the Microsoft-infused Nook will move away from Android, the object of contention between the software giant and book retailer prior to the investment, but Barnes & Noble likely won't shed many tears despite its once spirited defense of its right to use Android against Microsoft. Even when compared to its rival Amazon, which has maintained control of Kindle Fire apps via the Amazon App Store, Barnes & Noble turned up its nose at the vast majority of Android apps, hand-picking those optimized for the Nook experience.
The new venture's focus on textbooks should be a fertile ground for the partnership; the large e-reader market has come a long way since Amazon launched the Kindle DX almost three years ago. Barnes & Noble has strong ties into the college textbook market and Windows 8 tablets can be expected to be larger than the average notebooks today. Already, even Android devices are testing the upper limit of tablet size with the 13" Toshiba Excite tablet.
Indeed, textbooks stand to be a great showcase for the power of Windows 8. Digital textbook startup Kno -- which abandoned plans to ship not only a 14" tablet but a dual-screened version of such a device -- has applied some effort into designing a textbook experience that goes beyond the demands of simplbook reading. However, far more can be done to enable true collaborative studying and management of multiple texts. At the same time, a Nook experience should allow for long battery life and simple operation; these will also be battlefronts for Microsoft versus Android and iOS-based competition.
More Info
- Microsoft invests $300 million in new Barnes & Noble 'strategic partnership'
- Same song, second verse: Microsoft sues Barnes & Noble for Android's patent infringement
- Barnes & Noble offers to repartition Nook Tablet storage, concedes you may need more than 1GB
Amazon has shown what can be built from a focus on books. The Kindle, and in particular the Kindle Fire, opened people's eyes into the role the company could serve as an ecosystem backer. Text-heavy books may represent about the simplest of digital media and bestsellers may be of interest to relatively few compared to music or movies. But the textbook market specially has high potential for serving as a Worm into households via schools, something that Apple has clearly recognized with its release of iBooks Author.
The Microsoft-Barnes and Noble tie-up breathes new life into the Nook, nevertheless it also shows that Microsoft is committed to closing gaps with regards to competing with Apple, Amazon.com and Google in every digital media market. While the investment within the digital book space could have one of the most direct impact on Microsoft Washington state neighbor Amazon.com, the resulting trio of digital media storefronts -- Windows Market for apps, Zune for music and video, and Nook for books -- create some degree-by-point answer to deal with Apple's iTunes app store, iTunes and iBooks.
Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) is executive director and principal analyst of the NPD Connected Intelligence service on the NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
From WhatNewsToday.net
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