It was announced today by Barnes and Noble, the producers of the Nook which is rapidly gaining ground on its closest rival, the Amazon Kindle, that it is launching the third generation of its e-reader which is a lighter, smaller and more portable device touted by the company as the ‘all new Nook’. This is a very minimalistic device which is targeted at those users who are not obsessed with the latest tablets or the next gen smartphone, those strata of the crowd who are mildly averse or indifferent towards the latest cutting edge technology and want something convenient, useable and not too complicated. The CEO of Barnes and Noble’s, William Lynch said that the design of the product is inspired by those people for whom the products in the market appear to be too daunting.
According to Lynch, there are more than 11 million users of e-readers, which is a substantial number given the fact that these devices have only been available for around 4 years. However, he also said that there are more than 60 million people in the word who still buy 13 actual books every year, which makes it a vastly untapped market which is waiting for the right device which will prompt these people to make the shift to digital books.
Even though the Nook has only been two years in the market, compared to the four years of Kindle, its current versions have achieved a market share of more than 25% in e-book content.
The new Nook has been designed by the Ammunition Group, an industrial design firm based in San Francisco which also designed the original Nook and the Nook Color. The new e-reader has a display measuring 6 inches and weighs a shade less than 7.5 ounces, which makes it the lightest device of its category in the market and also 33% lighter than the original Nook. This one features WiFi and a touch interface, but no 3G connectivity.
The new Nook keeps its focus on avid readers as it has a longer battery life than any of its competitor’s offerings, which keeps it powered on for over two months without WiFi. The latest e-ink technology, the Pearl 220, has been used here which although being optimized for usage in sunlight, does not support color like the V2.0 of the original Nook (called Nook Color).
