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I thought everyone would be interested. ZDNet is usually pretty Apple happy but this article praises the NC.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-first-great-android-tablet-nook-color/8570#comments
richdaley said:
I thought everyone would be interested. ZDNet is usually pretty Apple happy but this article praises the NC.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-first-great-android-tablet-nook-color/8570#comments
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Praises the Nook Color as a full blown tablet (once the App Store opens)... I wonder what the execs at Barnes and Noble are thinking right now? My guess: "Should we try to ride this tiger? Will it eat us in the end or will it help us devour the competition?" I suspect there's a lot of soul searching going on in Barnes and Nobleland.
i think BN knows what they have - i am sure they built the nook as such knowing they will make use of its full capabilities once they have content to offer - to me the nook color offers a conduit for selling not only books but rich media - audio, video, graphic novels etc - BN is aware Amazon is working on their own tablet and that amazon has a robust portfolio of content - so this is a pre-emptive move on their part before amazon launches their tablet - after all, BN also set the bar for pricing the piece ( a low cost high quality tablet) - Amazon will have to also compete on price not only on content
dsf3g said:
Praises the Nook Color as a full blown tablet (once the App Store opens)... I wonder what the execs at Barnes and Noble are thinking right now? My guess: "Should we try to ride this tiger? Will it eat us in the end or will it help us devour the competition?" I suspect there's a lot of soul searching going on in Barnes and Nobleland.
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A problem arises (and likely this is the reason for the apprehension by BN in releasing an "app store") if the NC becomes too successful as a tablet because it undermines its ability to be a successful loss-leader. Considering the CPU, screen, memory (flash and ram), battery and wireless controller I'd estimate the COGS comes in around $170 per unit, add in fabrication costs for the mainboard and housing and distribution/quality control and the NC is a low-margin or possibly negative-margin product. BN is counting on accessory and book sales to make a real profit on these devices, which is why they are probably not going to be too mod-friendly going forward.
This is really an inaccurate story. Stock NC already has email and a web browser on it. All they're really adding is the BN app store. There's no word yet on how many games/apps will be available. The update will bring Flash and the BN app store. It's not going to unlock it as a tablet the way rooting currently does.
mthe0ry said:
A problem arises (and likely this is the reason for the apprehension by BN in releasing an "app store") if the NC becomes too successful as a tablet because it undermines its ability to be a successful loss-leader. Considering the CPU, screen, memory (flash and ram), battery and wireless controller I'd estimate the COGS comes in around $170 per unit, add in fabrication costs for the mainboard and housing and distribution/quality control and the NC is a low-margin or possibly negative-margin product. BN is counting on accessory and book sales to make a real profit on these devices, which is why they are probably not going to be too mod-friendly going forward.
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If, what you are saying is true, they would still get accessory sales and the amount of book sales would not change. Those who buy eBooks would still buy them and those that don't...won't. I also highly doubt they sell these units at a loss. Small profit margin sure, loss...no. So any sales will still be good sales.
mthe0ry said:
A problem arises (and likely this is the reason for the apprehension by BN in releasing an "app store") if the NC becomes too successful as a tablet because it undermines its ability to be a successful loss-leader. Considering the CPU, screen, memory (flash and ram), battery and wireless controller I'd estimate the COGS comes in around $170 per unit, add in fabrication costs for the mainboard and housing and distribution/quality control and the NC is a low-margin or possibly negative-margin product. BN is counting on accessory and book sales to make a real profit on these devices, which is why they are probably not going to be too mod-friendly going forward.
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This is only a problem with rooted nook tablets, though. A stock Nook tablet that has to go through the Nook App store still produces sales revenue for Barnes and Noble.
I've heard they do sell them at a loss. They sell them at a loss with the idea that people who have them will buy ebooks which are basically pure profit. There is no cost in warehousing ebooks, no cost in printing them, minimal cost in changing them from print to digital and minimal cost in delivery. It's been rumored for a while that Amazon would be giving a free Kindle to all their Prime customers just because people who own e-readers buy more books than those who don't and they are better off financially selling their e-readers at a loss and making up for it with the nearly pure profit they get off ebooks.
dsf3g said:
This is only a problem with rooted nook tablets, though. A stock Nook tablet that has to go through the Nook App store still produces sales revenue for Barnes and Noble.
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That is what I am thinking too. If they make them attractive enough as a tablet for Joe Public, he will not be as tempted to root them which means they are running the B&N store exclusively. I think it is a good strategy especially since in my opinion the stock UI is very nice for what it does and with the addition of flash and other features, they have a winner. We nerds don't count because we are going to root it (but some of us are loyal to B&N anyway).
I don't know much about the publishing business but maybe there is also some advantage to just selling a bajillion of these things even at cost. Barnes and Noble cannot get by if they are just going to copy Kindle. They needed to make a bold move, which they did and their stock has been rebounding.
The overhead in ebooks is server space, bandwidth and the big one being copyright licensing to the publishers. It is definitely not pure profit.
cabbieBot said:
The overhead in ebooks is server space, bandwidth and the big one being copyright licensing to the publishers. It is definitely not pure profit.
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And all of that is next to nothing compared to the cost of print media. You're going to have licensing either way so that's a wash. Server space and bandwidth is negligible. An Ebook is nothing more than a few hundred kb. I would bet that a RAID array with just a TB or two of space could store every ebook on Amazon.
Edit: I'm at home on call so I'm bored so I did the math. Amazon claims to have 1.8 million pre-1923 books that are out of copyright plus 850,000 other books. Now, I rounded up allowing for growth and settled on a number of 3 million books. Even at 1 mb a book (which is really pretty big for an ebook), you would need ~2.9 TB of storage space for the entire Amazon library. Amazon can easily afford a series of NAS' holding that much space. Heck, you or I could buy a NAS of that size for a few hundred bucks.
Let's keep in mind a truism of production that the more you buy (make) the less you pay for what it's made of. Now unless the buyers at B&N are absolute morons (and I do doubt they are) the more NC's they order constructed the price to B&N should well drop! Thus increasing the margin of profit while keeping the current price point.
skeeterpro said:
Let's keep in mind a truism of production that the more you buy (make) the less you pay for what it's made of. Now unless the buyers at B&N are absolute morons (and I do doubt they are) the more NC's they order constructed the price to B&N should well drop! Thus increasing the margin of profit while keeping the current price point.
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I have a rooted NC would would love to see Froyo and Flash on the NC supported by BN. However, the arguments are basically the guys in the business "suits" vs the "geeks". Even if the NC are sold at a small profits, the "suits" on Wall St would not like that. The suits want profit margin.
My guess is that the mid-April update will be less than what this forum expects. I do hope I am wrong.
A. Nonymous said:
This is really an inaccurate story. Stock NC already has email and a web browser on it. All they're really adding is the BN app store. There's no word yet on how many games/apps will be available. The update will bring Flash and the BN app store. It's not going to unlock it as a tablet the way rooting currently does.
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Can someone point to a BN press release indicating Flash? Even the HSN website (which I don't trust) doesn't mention Flash. I am trying to find supporting evidence of Flash.
http://electronics.hsn.com/nook-col...ablet-with-wi-fi-and-ebooks_p-6392436_xp.aspx
I was told by a sales rep that there would be an update with flash support this year. Of course we all know a sales rep will say anything to make a sale. Personally I ignored about everything be said as I walked in knowing I was putting froyo on it.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Interesting article on the success of the NC:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/03/28/barnes.and.noble.said.shipped.3m.nook.colors/
Not sure if the #s they're stating fall into the "you can make any statistic true with the proper set of qualifications" category, but impressive nonetheless. This little half-price tablet is definitely getting some nice press of late!
yay nook color! the best ipad competitor!
(in sales)
The nook is a great tablet once nookie or CM7 is installed.
I'm wondering how many of those sales are unmodified nooks?
=X=
=X= said:
I'm wondering how many of those sales are unmodified nooks? =X=
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Perhaps the xda moderators can help. If you assume every viewer of the youtube video on rooting the NC (~100K) and every unique xda viewer of the BN Android Forum has rooted one, that would be the number of rooted nooks.
Assuming 500K unique views of the forum and the 100K from youtube, that's 600,000 units that have been rooted. So it's about 20%.
Can someone provide the number of XDA viewers?
Rooted stock is pretty good. For flash i just remote in to my htpc
Sent from my LogicPD Zoom2 using XDA App
fpga_guy said:
Perhaps the xda moderators can help. If you assume every viewer of the youtube video on rooting the NC (~100K) and every unique xda viewer of the BN Android Forum has rooted one, that would be the number of rooted nooks.
Assuming 500K unique views of the forum and the 100K from youtube, that's 600,000 units that have been rooted. So it's about 20%.
Can someone provide the number of XDA viewers?
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Hm so your estimating about 20% are rooted/mod.
If those numbers are anywhere near the ball park that is a pretty impressive number.
=X=
I interpreted that article as the nook accounts for half of the non-ipad tablets, not half of the tablets.
=X= said:
The nook is a great tablet once nookie or CM7 is installed.
I'm wondering how many of those sales are unmodified nooks?
=X=
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I moved back to stock just to enjoy endless battery life. CM7 is cool, but still needs some polish. CM guys rule anyway
Apple has probably moved 20-30 million iPads since the device was unveiled. Still, it is undeniably impressive that Barnes and Noble has sold half of the non-apple tablets in the U.S.
Just goes to show how much demand there is for a cheap, decent, 7" competitor to the iPad.
If B&N plays their cards right they can definitely leverage this to their advantage. The Nook Color could well be the one decision that saves teh company.
If B&N opens a robust store in April and loosens up on their earlier stated policy that the store will feature apps that "enhance the reading experience" then I predict the Nook Color will be a huge money maker for B&N (and they'll seriously cut down on ordinary users "rooting" their Nooks if they provide a decent in-house ecosystem for the device).
Wow. Impressive stuff. I've read several articles recently in mainstream publications (WSJ, NY Times I think) about the NC, so I'm sure that doesn't hurt.
Yeah the word is getting out. I have met two nurses I work with that own NCs and they saw my rooted stock and begged me to set theirs up like that. I pointed them here [XDA] of course but then they'll show all their friends/family and so on. Hopefully the decision makers at B&N realize what they have and don't mess it up with price increases or restrictions.
timmyjoe42 said:
I interpreted that article as the nook accounts for half of the non-ipad tablets, not half of the tablets.
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Thats is what it says the OP got it confused.
Meaning that All non apple tablets combine for 6 million sales and nook has 3 million.
The best I can tell from the internets is that Apple was somewhere at 15 million in 2010 and could sell 5-9 million ipads this quarter.
So yea nook has a very rough estimate of about 10% of the tablet market come the end of q1 2011.
Now if all 3 million of us could show our support and buy a few books, barnes and nobles should be okay.
dsf3g said:
If B&N opens a robust store in April and loosens up on their earlier stated policy that the store will feature apps that "enhance the reading experience" then I predict the Nook Color will be a huge money maker for B&N (and they'll seriously cut down on ordinary users "rooting" their Nooks if they provide a decent in-house ecosystem for the device).
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All they have to do is allow sideloaded apk's and get ride of the cellphone drain issues and I would probably not care about rooting it.
The 3 million number means nothing. We all know that B&N sells Nooks at near cost or even small loss. Their strategy was and still is to drive ebook sales and not every sold Nook translates into even single purchased book. So congratulate you can B&N all you want, but unless they will translate the market penetration into real profits based on the sold books, this would be known as Pyrrhic victory.
Masterface7 said:
Thats is what it says the OP got it confused.
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Actually that's what meant when I said, "you can make any statistic true with the proper set of qualifications". The thread title was taken directly from the article (that's why I added quote marks around it). I wasn't insinuating that the NC had sold 1:1 against the iPad in the US, just that they were stating some impressive numbers for it and that it's getting some great overall press across the board.
netscorer said:
The 3 million number means nothing. We all know that B&N sells Nooks at near cost or even small loss. Their strategy was and still is to drive ebook sales and not every sold Nook translates into even single purchased book. So congratulate you can B&N all you want, but unless they will translate the market penetration into real profits based on the sold books, this would be known as Pyrrhic victory.
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This is a really odd declaration.
Let's say that B&N sells their product at a loss. That still means that they have 3 million devices out there that are driving their brand name. They have an installed base of customers that they can drive applications towards (with their future app store), and they have the ebook store, and then they have all the accessories (which is where the real markup is anyways!).
So why the negativity? Selling three million units is a milestone no matter how you look at it.
Apple has probably moved 20-30 million iPads since the device was unveiled. Still, it is undeniably impressive that Barnes and Noble has sold half of the non-apple tablets in the U.S.
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I think the article did mean 50% of iPad sales. Apple sold about 15 millions of iPads in total worldwide from its launch up to March when the iPad 2 was launched. It sold about 7.5 million in FALL worldwide.
So, if B&N sold 3 millions of Nook Color in fall in US alone, that would be a great success for a tablet that wasn't even marketed as a tablet.
So why the negativity? Selling three million units is a milestone no matter how you look at it.
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On paper, frankly, that's quite a bit of financial loss if a lot of those buyers are only interested in using their Nook Color as a tablet. But if there are at least 30% of them being used as a dedicated reader, it should still be considered a success because B&N is on the way to become the next Border's before the Nook Color came out. Now, they are back in the game. Whether it will beat the Kindle in the long run remains to be seen, but at least it now has a bigger user base to compete.
On top of that, you are right that even if many Nook Color users are using it as a tablet, it's still a form of marketing. In fact, it's probably cheaper than other forms of marketing because:
1) The Nook Color users still have to pay B&N $249. Their loss won't be too significant
2) Everytime the users look at their Nook Color, it reminds them of B&N. Consider the average lifespan of the device is 1 year, that's 365 days of marketing for a small price to pay
So, if B&N really did sell 3 millions of Nook Color, it would be hard not to call it a success.
and that for tablets the nook color is in second place in sales they get there name out there more with "success story" and "the cheap tab you don't know of", and "the e-reader that can" articles. its win iced in win sauce with a side of kickass
NewZJ said:
its win iced in win sauce with a side of kickass
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I lol'ed
NewZJ said:
and that for tablets the nook color is in second place in sales they get there name out there more with "success story" and "the cheap tab you don't know of", and "the e-reader that can" articles. its win iced in win sauce with a side of kickass
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Fuk yeah. I use it as just an ereader, hacked my phones to bits. All the people at work who read are interested in it and now they want one. Kinda cool at the coffee shops I'm seeing more nooks and less glowing apples. I want this thing to succeed cause I like b&n and don't want them to fall like borders did. They are really pushing the update next month in the sales pitch right now. I hope it is a good one.
Barnes & Noble Plans New E-Book Reader... link below....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703849204576303692366033096.html
Here's the full article from WSJ MAY 4, 2011, 7:37 P.M. ET
By MAXWELL MURPHY
Barnes & Noble Inc. will unveil a new electronic book reader later this month, the bookseller told analysts and investors on Wednesday, according to a federal filing released after the close of trading.
The bookseller's stock had jumped 14.3% on Wednesday to $12.03. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which contained one sentence of text to comply with disclosure rules, except to confirm the meeting took place in New York City. She declined to say when during the day the meeting took place, or when specifically executives mentioned the forthcoming launch.
The filing said simply that the company, in the meeting, "indicated it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011, regarding the launch of a new eReader device."
One possibility is Barnes & Noble will release a more powerful combination tablet and e-reader, perhaps running a more advanced software like Google Inc.'s Honeycomb software. Honeycomb is a version of the Android operating system Google created specifically for tablets.
Last month, Barnes & Noble said it is upgrading the software of its popular Nook Color e-reader, giving the device a newer version of Android. The Nook Color, which has a touch screen, will now allow users to download free and paid applications, like the popular game Angry Birds, provide greater email functionality and allow users to play Flash videos, among other features.
The software upgrade effectively turned the Nook Color into a low-cost tablet which, at $249 apiece, is hundreds of dollars less than competitors like Apple Inc.'s iPad 2, Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.'s and the Research In Motion Ltd. PlayBook. The more expensive tablets do have several advantages over the Nook Color, like cameras, a much wider selection of apps than Nook Color currently has, and more powerful processors.
Some eager and tech-savvy Nook Color owners had figured out a software "jailbreak" to make the tablet switch without any help from the company, but voided their warranties by doing so.
Barnes & Noble recently suspended its dividend to focus on growth of its digital business and the Nook platform. Nook tablets now command about a quarter of the e-book reader market, Barnes & Noble says, trailing only Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle, which analysts contend accounts for most of the remaining three quarters of the rapidly growing market.
Write to Maxwell Murphy at [email protected]
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I'm betting on a NC 10" to compete against the Kindle DX and all of the other 10" tabs out there. Remember, you heard it here first folks! Now if they can only keep the cost down to $350, I might be buying one too.
colorado_al said:
Here's the full article from WSJ MAY 4, 2011, 7:37 P.M. ET
I'm betting on a NC 10" to compete against the Kindle DX and all of the other 10" tabs out there. Remember, you heard it here first folks! Now if they can only keep the cost down to $350, I might be buying one too.
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for 350 bucks id rather spend another 50 and get a transformer
luciferii said:
for 350 bucks id rather spend another 50 and get a transformer
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The $350-450 range is destined to become ultra competitive, that's for sure.
luciferii said:
for 350 bucks id rather spend another 50 and get a transformer
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No doubt
Sent from my NookColor using XDA Premium App
I guess that's why there are hints of other connectivity in the kernel.
This article says Amazon will be entering the tablet market with a $250 tab. Although I can't tell you how reliable the source is. I thought I would just post this here and see what you guys think.
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
yeah, lower pricing and ice cream, is going to hurt apple's ipad
All depends on specs.
I'm interested if it's a 10" and lighter than the NOOKcolor. Willing to pay no more than $400. After playing with the 10' Galaxy Tab the NOOK is indeed too heavy.
SCIONTX said:
I'm interested if it's a 10" and lighter than the NOOKcolor. Willing to pay no more than $400. After playing with the 10' Galaxy Tab the NOOK is indeed too heavy.
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No microSD slot on any device is a no-go for me though.
"Analyst" is business speak for bull**** artist. Which is about as much credence as I lend to this article.
As cell carriers like verizon and AT&T continue to restrict and impact cloud content models like IPAD and IPhone with their data rate restrictions and higher data cost, a Amazon tablet could become even more viable as a competitor using pre-purchased stored content vs. cloud content. Go Amazon....
.........with the hopes of getting their money back with sales from the Amazon app store. It is expected that they could recoup the loss from each tablet within 6 months and make a profit of 10 to 30 percent per tablet over the next 18 months.
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And therein lies the rub. B&N turned a blind eye when developers started rooting it to take advantage of the Android Market. Why? Maybe because they were more interested in selling books than apps. How many here with a Nook Color have the Nook Reader Android app and still buy books from B&N?I know I do and now my wife shares them with me on her NC. I also have the Kindle app but I have yet to buy a book from Amazon. They are pretty much the same price so why should I give my book money to Amazon when B&N has been so good about the whole thing?
I've read an article from somewhere, indicated that Samsung will release their 2nd-gen 7.0" tablet with 1280x720 TFT screen running either HC3.2 or ICS. Don't know the price though.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57...s-noble/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Not sure if this would be a good thinq but expect it would not...
Maybe good news for those waiting for a fire sale on B&N NOOKcolor and NOOKtablet devices?
Looks like the locked bootloader really killed Nook Tablet sales plus the Kindle Fire is taking a big chunk of would be nook Color\Tablet owners
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
Nothing stopping them from releasing an update to "free" the Nook Tablet from their "jail" basically. I don't think they're stupid, but I do think that somewhere deep inside B&N HQ someone is getting raked over the coals about the lockdown - it would behoove B&N to do something, and fast.
That 1.41 update that basically cripples the NT could be construed as a "final nail in the coffin" but they can fix it, if they don't keep dicking around and making stupid decisions.
I just yesterday got to play with a Nook Tablet for the first time since they came out, and the instant impression was "Wow, this is quite noticeably much faster than the Nook Color" which is pretty obvious because of the dual core nature and more storage and faster CPU speed.
But then I walked across the store I was in and got a Kindle Fire in my hands and that thing REALLY was snappy even compared to the NT. But I'd never buy a Fire because of no expandable storage - that's simply unacceptable in this day and age. As far as the web browsing on the Fire, it doesn't matter to me as I prefer using Opera mini and that's way faster - Opera perfected that preloaded page serving stuff many years ago. Amazon's "Silk" implementation isn't bad but, Opera mini on the same hardware just leaves it standing still.
I hope B&N comes to their senses, and fast.
Quotes from article...
Since it appears some did not click on the link:
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Indeed, Barnes & Noble cut its sales forecast for fiscal 2012, which ends April 30. The company projected fiscal 2012 revenue of $7 billion and $7.2 billion. Wall Street was expecting $7.33 billion. The company will also lose $1.40 to $1.10 a share for the year. Barnes & Noble said sales of the Nook Simple Touch and investments in the Nook business led to the losses. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 63 cents a share.
Barnes & Noble shares were crushed in early trading.
...
There are no guarantees that the Nook unit will be spun off. The company said it is looking into international expansion with partners.
Barnes & Noble also provided some sales data, but actual unit data wasn’t given. Barnes & Noble said Nook unit sales were up 70 percent from a year ago. Nook Tablet sales exceeded expectations and Nook Simple Touch lagged. Digital content sales were up 113 percent from a year ago. Nook sales were driven by third party retailers.
...
The locked bootloader has nothing to do with B&N's financial woes. They did it to allow use of DRM for videos due to the RIAA and Google. This has already been sidestepped BTW. In a similar vein, Acer launcher their new Transformer with a locked bootloader but has announced they will have an unlock tool for those that don't care about having access to DRM'd videos or a warranty.
It has everything to do with this issue though.
Homer
I don't disagree homer, although I think B&N is still struggling on how to "bridge the gap" a lot. I also think they are going to struggle on their own with trying to provide movies, music, apps along with their books for their products. Not teaming with Google (or at least letting you link your google app purchases) will be a big downfall. If I already bought something on Amazon's appstore, I don't want to have to re-buy it on the Nook store just because I have a Nook vs a Kindle.
They need to figure out how to encourage folks to come to the stores, and I think in some ways Apple has it right. B&N needs to make a big commitment to having resources where folks can come in and play with the devices, get drinks, sit and enjoy a quiet reading environment, etc.
I don't think it'll save all 700 stores, but it could create a good long-term strategy for them.