In order to survive in fierecely competitive market, Barnes & Noble has cut prices on three models of its Nook e-reader and tablet devices. They have taken this decision to make their devices more attractive for students for their new school season in US and amid speculation that rival Amazon.com Inc is preparing to launch a new version of its Kindle Fire tablet. Their main worry seems to be new version of Kindle Fire and successful launch of Google’s Nexus tablet, which is priced at $ 199 for 8GB version.
Amazon is the market leader in US with about 60 percent of e-book and e-reader sales. Nook e-readers are estimated to have 27 percent market share in US and in order to sustain its share in highly competitive market, Barnes & Noble has slashed the prices of its Nook tablet with 16 GB of memory to $199 from $249. They have also cut $20 price of its 8 GB version of the tablet to $179, and Nook Color by $20, bringing it to $149.
The new prices are effective immediately and Barnes & Noble expect that its cash registers will keep ringing with movement of more boxes. They were forced to lower their prices of various versions on a number of occasions, to compete with Amazon, which is market leader in this segment, and which is believed to be preparing for launch of new Kindle Fire before the start of festival season. Besides Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble also perceive great threat from online giant – Google with its smash-hit Nexus tablet. In the coming months, all these three companies will jostle with each other to find maximum space in the market.
