ITC staff lawyer Jeff Hsu in a discussion Monday said he would recommend to Administrative Law Judge Theodore Essex that Barnes & Noble hadn't violated the three patents at the heart of a Microsoft lawsuit. The recommendation isn't binding, but could be a strong clue as to the ruling Judge Essex may make on April 27.
The International Trade Commission gave an initial ruling Tuesday that Barnes & Noble couldn't bring its antitrust claims against Microsoft. An Administrative Law Judge granted Microsoft's motion to dismiss the claims that it was abusing patents to try and squeeze Android out of the market. Details of the full ruling were still unpublished, but the Office of Unfair Import Investigations had already hinted that Barnes & Noble wasn't passing legal muster on issues such as licensing, which isn't compulsory for Microsoft.
Barnes & Noble's chief merchandising officer Jaime Carey issued a statement declaring that the company's retail stores wouldn't carry Amazon's paper books. The move was in retaliation for Amazon trying to push for e-book exclusives such as its DC Comics deal. A publisher that as a store operator would pull its content wasn't a "good publishing partner," the CMO said.
Barnes & Noble in an elaborate study of its business gave away plans for a third-generation Nook e-reader. Scant details were given to the New York Times, but it would ship sometime in the spring. The bookseller's recently established pattern suggests it's an E Ink reader like the Nook Simple Touch rather than an Android tablet.
Friday signaled the second anniversary of the iPad's introduction and what has since been interpreted as the start of a shift in the entire computing space. Apple's tablet was unveiled this day in 2010 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco by its late co-creator, Steve Jobs. It would only go on sale April 2, but it proved to be polarizing from its unveiling, even for Apple loyalists.
Toshiba has introduced a new seven-inch color e-book reader in Japan, the BD50. Effectively a local alternative to the Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet, the Android 2.3 slate carries a 1024x600 LCD as well as 8GB of internal storage space. A 1GHz Freescale CPU powers the device and is paired with 1GB of RAM.
Apple during its fall quarter results revealed IDC data that tablets outsold PCs in the fall. While he didn't provide concrete details, he suggested that the iPad, Android, and other tablet platforms had pushed past the combined Mac and Windows PC markets. IDC's own PC figures showed 18.6 million US computers, making it probable that Apple's 15.4 million plus the smaller share of the rest of the market was enough to push past.
Ownership of both tablets and e-readers exploded through the holidays, Pew found on Monday. About 10 percent of Americans owned each in December, but both had surged to 19 percent in January. There was relatively little overlap, as 18 percent owned one or the other before the holiday rush while 29 percent had either an e-reader or a tablet in January.
Apple's New York City education event is nothing less than a rethinking of how publishers create e-books as a whole, leaks divulged Monday. One scoop characterized the process to Ars Technica as a "GarageBand for e-books" that would let authors and publishers easily build e-books for iPads and iPhones, including interactive books. iBooks would also start supporting ePub 3, which supports audio and video natively and would make the store much more standards-compatible than Apple's custom take on ePub 2.
The Barnes & Noble Nook Color has had its boot loader by-passed and Android 4.0 successfully installed. @Nemith, an XDA Developers forum member, has posted the first images of a Nook Color running CynaogenMod 9 with Android 4.0 also running. The workaround was made possible by using a microSD card to install CynaogenMod9, which enabled the tablet to be booted from there instead of the built-in storage without erasing the standard software.
LG on Thursday became the latest company steered into signing a patent license deal with Microsoft. The Spectrum designer has agreed to pay Microsoft an unknown amount for "broad coverage" both on Android and Chrome OS despite LG not yet having a Chromebook on the market. Unlike past such licenses, however, Microsoft didn't issue a boilerplate observation that LG was paying royalties, leaving the door open to a lump sum.
Microsoft has scaled back the reach of its dispute with Barnes & Noble has made a deal to streamline some of the case. A filing this week dropped one patent, for a browser loading status feature, from an International Trade Commission complaint against the Nook maker. Four other patents had some of their individual claims dropped.
Barnes & Noble is giving readers $50 off the regular price of a Nook Tablet if they buy the device in conjunction with an online subscription to People magazine. Individuals who commit to a $10 per month annual subscription to the interactive digital edition of the publication can purchase the Nook for $200. The normal price for the device is $250.
Barnes & Noble conducted an unusual strategy Thursday that amounted to an attempt to sell its Nook e-reader business. Although its Nook sales spiked 70 percent over what they were last year, the company was considering both breaking out the Nook group both for separate reporting as well as a selloff. The company wanted to "unlock that value" in its digital business, it said, and was planning a review that by the end of the year would make a decision on the business.
Barnes & Noble is considering selling off its paper publishing wing Sterling Publishing, new leaks might have divulged on Wednesday. In hoping to focus on the Nook line and its core retail business, it was lining up possible customers, the Wall Street Journal said. The bookshop has been publishing some of its own content since the 1970s but only bought Sterling in 2003, years before e-books took off.
Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair doused investor expectations of a 7.85-inch mini iPad with an update on Friday. He believed Apple had been testing seven-inch tablets for "over a year," but he didn't expect Apple to release one of the kind in 2012. While not claiming inside knowledge, he instead reckoned that Apple would follow the iPhone strategy of preserving an older model and keep the iPad 2 on the market, just at a lower price.
Barnes & Noble has just revealed that it has added new official apps to its Nook Tablet and Nook Color devices. They include the popular Words with Friends, with Twitter and Plants vs. Zombies coming soon. Others are promised for early next year as well.
Tablet display panel makers claimed Wednesday that orders for seven-inch tablet displays in November had overtaken those of 9.7-inch displays, which are used almost exclusively in the iPad. The combination of strong Amazon Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet demand was said by the Digitimes contacts to have pushed order up 17 percent month to month. The sources didn't provide targets for December or break down shipments by the individual maker, although Barnes & Noble may have shipped 1.5 million Nooks while rumors have surfaced of five million Kindle Fires shipping in 2011.
Microsoft achieved a key win as the ITC ruled in its favor in a complaint against Motorola. An early ruling from the trade agency found that some Motorola devices allegedly violate one of seven Microsoft patents. The Windows maker's deputy general counsel David Howard took the company's typical approach in a response, saying Microsoft was "pleased" and arguing that every Android device maker must pay royalties.
A new tablet display showdown at DisplayMate has given the Nook Tablet the win over Apple's iPad 2 for display quality. Both are accurate and have bright, 24-bit color displays, but the Barnes & Noble reader has better-balanced contrast and gamma levels. Apple's levels were boosted too high, according to the study.
Frequent patent-based attacker Mosaid on Monday said its shareholders had greenlit a plan that would sell the company to Sterling Fund Management for $570 million, or slightly less than the $590 million mentioned in October. It should close by the end of this week. Sterling's exact aims weren't mentioned with the deal.
Barnes & Noble may have doubled its tablet shipments in the fall. Having shipped over 800,000 Nook Color devices in the summer, the company was said by part suppliers speaking to Digitimes late Thursday to be delivering a combination of 1.5 million Android-based devices during the fall. About 1.1 million of those would be the new Nook Tablet, with the remaining 400,000 being the price-discounted Color.
Amazon's Kindle Fire could cut Apple's share of the tablet market to under 60 percent for the first time, IDC estimated Thursday. Android would climb from 32.4 percent to get a collective 40.3 percent through the Fire which, along with some help from the Nook Tablet, would push the iPad down from 61.5 percent this summer to 59 percent of tablets. The BlackBerry PlayBook would lose some ground as well, down from 1.1 percent to 0.7 percent, while the HP TouchPad's final exit would give up five percent.
Barnes & Noble as promised has rolled out the 1.4 update to the Nook Color. The upgrade is key to switching on content made available first on the Nook Tablet and lets users get the Netflix video app as well as watch UltraViolet-linked movies through the Flixster app. Readers can also browse Nook Comics from Marvel, IDW, Dynamite, and others.
Barnes & Noble got an important win late this week after the ITC agreed (PDF) to make requests to Canada and Finland for evidence from patent holder Mosaid as well as Nokia. The calls would have Mosaid supply documents for its deal with Nokia through a letter rogatory, or a non-binding request to a foreign court. Nokia, meanwhile, would be asked for testimony from CEO Stephen Elop and other executives under the Hague Convention's Article 3, in which case the court wouldn't have much choice but to comply.
After ignoring the tablet market for several years and dismissing color screens as inappropriate for e-book readers, Amazon has finally decided to expand its Kindle lineup to include a proper tablet. The Fire is aimed directly at Barnes & Noble's new Nook Tablet, though both devices are attempting to pull a bit of market share away from Apple's dominant iPad. In our full review, we compare Amazon's tablet to its direct rival and more expensive alternatives.
Kobo is trying a unique strategy to lure readers away from Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble by promising regular free e-books. Anyone who buys a Kobo Touch and first uses it on or before March 31 gets a free e-book each month. The publishers include Harvard Business Review Press, e-Reads, F+W Media, Gooseberry Patch, and New Word City, as well as four independent authors.
Sony has quietly dropped the price of the Reader Wi-Fi to $130. The $20 drop came less than two months after the e-reader went on sale in mid-October. The Starter and Travel bundles keep their earlier $205 prices.
The Amazon Kindle Fire has already occupied much of the Android tablet market in just one season, IHS iSuppli estimated Friday. At 3.9 million of the mini Android tablets, it would have 13.8 percent of the entire tablet share for the fall. Researchers are modeling for Apple to ship 18.6 million iPads, which would be enough to get it 65.6 percent of the tablet space.
As part of its fiscal 2012 second-quarter financial results, Barnes & Noble revealed that its Nook Tablet was the fastest-selling Nook product in the history of the company. It was launched on November 7, priced at $249, at which time the company also had its Nook Color tablet dropped to $199, and Nook Simple Touch at $99. Total Nook sales, including content and accessories, increased by 85 percent to $220 million during this time.
Certain local Target and Walmart stores have at least temporarily been selling the Amazon Kindle Fire for $123.38. Images have surfaced showing the Fire, as a limited time special in a Trumbull, Connecticut Target store for 35 percent off the normal selling price of $199. Photos of Walmart matching that price have also appeared on the web.
Rolling Stone's publisher Wenner Media has become one of the later big print magazine outlets to modernize and produce iPad magazine apps. Starting out modestly with a $10 app version of The Beatles: The Ultimate Album-by-Album Guide on December 1, Wenner plans versions of both Rolling Stone and of US Weekly for early 2012. The Beatles app will be enhanced with song samples and interviews, but the full magazines will be same-as-print editions adapted largely untouched.
Drawing attention to something Apple is doing wrong certainly isn't new, and arguably something that's needed to keep the company honest. Some of this has always come from those who are predisposed to avoid anything Apple makes. But we've lately seen a strain of anti-Apple rhetoric that's not just opposed, but produces a kind of anti-exceptionalist myth where everything bad in tech is Apple's fault: we like to call them Only Apple Does Wrong advocates. It's a trend that needs to stop, and the sooner it does, the better for intelligent tech fans of all stripes.
Barnes & Noble revealed that its Black Friday sale will also bring a rare version of the Nook Simple Touch. A Limited Edition version of the touchscreen e-reader will arrive only in physical stores, and only on November 25, with a white border as its signature feature. Price will be its real difference: at $79, it will be both $20 less than the regular price and match the price of the basic Kindle while giving features closer to the ad-sponsored $99 Kindle Touch.
A new McPheters & Company study has shown that publishers are just as likely to publish tablet magazines through the Nook store and Zinio reader app as they do through the iPad. Apple's tablet was almost exactly as likely to have a magazine publisher support it as its two rivals, with 46 percent signing on and just a one point difference with Barnes & Noble and Zinio. The iPhone was also equal, showing that the smaller screen wasn't necessarily a deterrent.
The iFixIt crew has just obtained the Nook Tablet conducted its traditional teardown in search of its repairability and parts. The full color e-book reader has a unique built-in design element that is the carabineer clip on its corner. The microSD card slot is right beside it and it's surrounded by two small circles that hide screws.
Keeping up the tradition of hacked Nooks, XDA-Developers forum contributors have posted a full root for the Nook Tablet. A combination of USB drivers as well as either a batch program or a command line sequence will let users freely install or remove apps on the Android 2.3 slate. The hack, zergRush, doesn't unlock the bootloader and thus won't take completely new firmware like CyanogenMod.
Barnes & Noble in its defense against Microsoft has countered with a 43-page list of prior art that it believes invalidate Microsoft's supposedly Android-related patents. The examples often go back over 16 years and include software as far back as NCSA's Mosaic browser, the precursor to Netscape and Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. The strategy would only need a handful of prior art claims to negate Microsoft's case.
IHS iSuppli revised its earlier cost breakdown for the Amazon Kindle Fire to a lower figure in a more final estimate that showed Amazon was still taking a loss on each device sold. While it's now expected to cost just $201.70 to make, that still told AllThingsD the $199 Android tablet was losing Amazon money on each sale, even before factoring in shipping and other costs. A look at the final product showed that there were cost savings even beyond what had been expected, including on the inside.
The lead analyst for mobile at PC Mag, Sascha Segan, confirmed that the Nook Tablet made official earlier this month will only allow 1GB of its 16GB of built-in storage space for content not purchased from Barnes & Noble. Segan is flabbergasted by this move, and rightly so, as Barnes & Noble CEO Bill Lynch himself called the competing Amazon Kindle Fire "deficient as a media tablet" because of its meager 8GB of storage space.
Amazon will fill a conspicuous gap in the Kindle Fire's newsstand Wednesday based on leak. Staff at Time Inc. told AllThingsD that, after negotiations that ran past the Kindle Fire's launch day, the key magazines the publisher has on virtually all tablets will reach Amazon's Android device. Fortune, People, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, and Time itself would be part of the launch.
Amazon's just-shipping Kindle Fire has already become the most desired target for Android apps, an Appcelerator study found. Of the Android developers it tracked on all platforms, 49 percent in North America wanted to target the reader tablet. It had already managed to become second worldwide, at 43 percent.
Barnes & Noble's complaints about Microsoft have accused the Windows developer of not just trying to be anti-competitive by discouraging Android but also trying to dictate what features Nook devices could use. Microsoft allegedly had "veto power" through prices as well as the terms of the license. It wanted control over what hardware and software features features the Nook was allowed to use, Barnes & Noble said, giving it a way to neuter a competitor by denying it any advantages.
Amazon revealed on Friday that the Kindle Fire will have access to both Hulu Plus and ESPN when it launches, putting it over the Nook Tablet. During the initial app announcement, the movie and TV show streaming service wasn't mentioned, though other premium services such as Netflix and games from EA and Zynga were. This now gives the Fire the edge over the Nook, as Amazon has its own video and music store, while Barnes & Noble doesn't.
Another discovered document in Barnes & Noble's antitrust claims against Microsoft made to the Department of Justice has found that Microsoft is trying to build a defense by making Google provide details of its strategy. A motion to compel, dated October 4 but only found Thursday, would ask to get Google's vital business analysis for Android, including how it saw Microsoft's patent licensing scheme hurting Android, its current abilities as a PC platform, and how it saw Microsoft-made platforms like Windows Phone. Since Google led the Android Open Source Project, it would have to have opinions on Microsoft's impact, the motion read.
Amazon's fourth-generation Kindle costs more to make than its $79 selling price, a cost breakdown has uncovered. IHS iSuppli told Main St that the e-reader costs $84.25 to build, or a combination of the $78.59 in raw parts and $5.66 in assembly. The most expensive part was the E Ink Pearl screen, at $30.50, while the circuit board was next at $30.37.
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten said late Tuesday that it was buying Kobo for $315 million in cash. The deal gives it access to both an e-bookstore and e-reader devices, including traditional devices like the Wireless eReader and Android tablets like the Kobo Vox. Rakuten explained it as a push to expand its ecosystem outside of Japan through a media store, where books would just be the start.
Barnes & Noble has quietly taken its allegations of Microsoft antitrust abuse to a formal level, according to newly-publicized documents. The company is now known to have sent a letter to the Department of Justice's chief competition counsel Gene Kimmelman on October 17 claiming that Microsoft's anti-Android patent licensing campaign was meant to artificially "drive out competition" and make companies choose Windows-based platforms. It contended that Microsoft's lawsuit against Barnes & Noble, Foxconn, and Inventec was more to silence competition from the Nook and other devices than any attempt to protect claimed innovations.
As expected, Barnes & Noble unveiled its Nook Tablet at a special event held in the company's flagship store in New York City. Electronista had a chance to take an early look at the new device, which is marketed as the best contender in the market for seven-inch tablets.
Barnes & Noble as part of its Nook Tablet intro also confirmed a price drop for the Nook Simple Touch, its new name for its e-paper touchscreen reader. The slate is going from its original $139 to $99, matching the Kindle Touch. Barnes & Noble claims superiority with a newly upgraded, 25 percent faster page update speed, an estimated doubled battery life over its Amazon equivalent, and a lack of ads at the same price.
