When you’re dealing with technology, you get a lot of, “Me too!” devices that hit the market. The success of the iPod lead to a thousand and one MP3-playing devices. The success of TiVo lead to a metric ton of DVR machines of all stripes from the Apple TV to the local cable company’s DVR-tuner. Now, the success of Amazon‘s Kindle e-book reader has lead to Barnes and Noble and Best Buy to team up and launch the Nook e-reader.
Rumor has it the $259 device will feature a color touch screen and the ability to share ebooks with friends. No word on what formats it will support, but unless they’re nuts, it’ll support as many formats as possible, from PDFs to normal text files and beyond. If Amazon was smart, they’d allow the Kindle’s ebook format to play on all the competition, too. Like Apple found out, you’ll have to open the format eventually, so you may as well become the market leader in ebook sales AND the market leader in ebook reader sales.
Tags: e-book reader, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, Nook, e-readers, Best Buy