With great power comes great responsibility — and a flurry of advertising campaigns that target your wares. Samsung tried to make its name a verb in a recent round of anti-Apple ads where senseless iPhone owners got “Samsunged,” and the South Korea-based vendor’s campaign culminated with a $10 million extravaganza that aired during the Super Bowl. Amazon is next up to the plate, and the company’s recent commercial takes aim at Apple’s iPad. A woman sunbathing and reading a book on her Kindle is approached by a passing iPad owner who is intrigued by the fact that she can read in the sunlight. When the man mentions the Kindle’s inability to play movies, she points to a cabana where her two children are sitting, each with a Kindle Fire tablet. As a final jab, the woman points out that her three Kindles — one $79 eReader and two $199 tablets — are still cheaper than a single iPad. Amazon’s full commercial can be viewed below.

Barnes & Noble’s fifth-generation “e-reading device” will reportedly launch this coming spring. Mentioned in passing within a New York Times profile of the struggling bookseller, it is unclear if the device in question will be a new media tablet or a standard eReader. With Barnes & Noble’s current-generation color tablet having just been announced this past November, however, a refresh of the company’s E Ink-equipped Nook Touch in the spring seems more likely. Barnes & Noble first unveiled the Nook Touch — then referred to as the “all-new Nook” — at a press conference in New York last spring. The device has since been upgraded with an improved display and a battery that lasts up to two months on a single charge, but the design of the eBook reader remained unchanged. The lightweight ergonomic case and soft-touch rubber feel on the Nook Touch make it our preference over Amazon’s E Ink eReader, so we hope the company’s fifth-generation model doesn’t stray far from the current design.

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Moments ago at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Apple’s VP of marketing Phil Schiller announced what has been rumored for weeks — Apple is setting its sights on the textbook industry. It seems that Apple will be more of an ally to textbook publishers with its new initiative, however, which is a drastically different approach from the company’s entrance into the music business when it ruffled the feathers of the major labels. Noting the challenges kids face in school, Apple is playing up the company’s strengths in delivering some of the best tools to help publishers deliver great content, made specifically for the iPad. Hit the break for more.

Textbooks for iPad, which became available by way of a new textbook category in iBooks 2, provide students with a modern, interactive replacement for conventional printed textbooks. They support multitouch gestures and also feature dictionary look-up integration and annotation. Students can highlight text, take notes and even create virtual note cards to reference later while studying.

Initially, high school-level textbooks will be made available in the iBookstore and they will each be priced at $14.99 or less. The first round of publishers with textbooks available for the iPad include Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

To create interactive textbooks and other digital books for the iPad, Apple has also introduced iBooks Author. The Mac application provides robust tools that let anyone build and publish interactive digital books for Apple’s iBooks store. It has the same look and feel as Apple’s iWork apps, and includes features like gallery support, 3D animation, video and interactive image support and more. Users can even insert custom Javascript or HTML5 code into eBooks using iBooks Author.

iBooks 2 is available immediately as a free download in Apple’s iOS App Store, and iBooks Author is available in the Mac App Store for free as well.

Amazon’s Kindle line was expected to be a popular option for holiday shoppers and the retailer confirmed as much on Thursday. Straying from its normally tight-lipped stance with regard to sharing sales volumes, Amazon announced that its Kindle Fire tablet and Kindle eReaders have sold more than 1 million combined units for three consecutive weeks. ”Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched – it’s the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand,” VP of Amazon’s Kindle business Dave Limp said in a statement. “In fact, demand is accelerating – Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks. People are buying Kindle Fire because it’s a simple, fully-integrated service that makes it easy to do the things they love – watch movies, read books and magazines, listen to music, download apps, play games, and surf the web.” Limp added that the Kindle family of eBook readers are close behind Kindle Fire on the Amazon.com bestseller list. The company’s full press release follows below.

Customers Purchasing Kindles at Rate of More Than 1 Million Per Week for Third Straight Week

Kindle Fire continues to lead the way as the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across all of Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago

Kindle Fire sales increase week over week for each of the past three holiday shopping weeks

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dec. 15, 2011– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon.com today announced that Kindle devices remain the hottest products this holiday season – for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week, and Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago. To learn more about the all-new Kindle family – the $79 Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch, $149 Kindle Touch 3G and the $199 Kindle Fire – visitwww.amazon.com/kindle.

“Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched – it’s the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand. In fact, demand is accelerating – Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks. People are buying Kindle Fire because it’s a simple, fully-integrated service that makes it easy to do the things they love – watch movies, read books and magazines, listen to music, download apps, play games, and surf the web,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “Our family of Kindle e-ink readers are close behind Kindle Fire on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Customers continue to report preferring their Kindle e-reader for long-form reading, and in fact we’ve seen many customers buy two Kindles – both a Kindle Fire and a Kindle or Kindle Touch – this holiday season.”

Kindle Fire offers more than 19 million movies, TV shows, songs, books, magazines, apps and games – such as Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and Angry Birds – as well as free storage of Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync for books and movies, a 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand, a vibrant, color touch screen, a powerful dual-core processor and Amazon Silk – Amazon’s new revolutionary web browser that accelerates the power of the mobile device by using the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services cloud – all for only $199.

The $79 latest generation Kindle is for readers around the world who want the lightest, most compact Kindle at an incredible price. Kindle is now small and light enough – at less than 6 ounces – to fit easily in your pocket and carry with you everywhere, yet it still features the same 6-inch, most advanced electronic ink display that reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight.

Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G feature an easy-to-use touch screen that makes it easier than ever to turn pages, search, shop, and take notes – still with all the benefits of the most advanced electronic ink display. Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G are also lighter, smaller, offer audio capabilities, such as text-to-speech and deep integration for audiobooks, extra-long battery life and hold thousands of books. Kindle Touch 3G offers the unparalleled added convenience of free 3G. Kindle’s free 3G connection means you never have to hunt for or pay for a Wi-Fi hotspot – you simply download and read books anytime, anywhere in over 100 countries around the world. Amazon pays for the 3G connection so there’s no monthly fee or annual contract. Both Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G include X-ray – a new feature invented by Amazon that lets customers explore the “bones of the book.”

With an Amazon Prime membership, all of the new Kindles offer access to the new Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and Prime Instant Video. With theKindle Owners Lending Library, Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free – including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. No other e-reader or e-bookstore offers such a service. With Prime Instant Video, Kindle Fire owners can access nearly 13,000 movies and TV shows available to stream at no additional cost.

Customers can order the new Kindle family today: the $79 Kindle at www.amazon.com/kindle, Kindle Touch for $99 atwww.amazon.com/kindletouch, Kindle Touch 3G for $149 at www.amazon.com/kindletouch3G and Kindle Fire for $199 atwww.amazon.com/kindlefire.

Amazon has been a leader in the eBook reader space since it first introduced the Kindle eReader in November 2007. At that point in time, the Kindle had a 6-inch E Ink display that supported just four shades of gray, it included 250MB of storage that could accommodate about 200 eBooks, and it retailed for $399. For the first six months or so, Amazon couldn’t keep the device in stock — it was a smash hit.

Since then, Kindles have gotten thinner and lighter, and the current-generation model features a dramatically improved E Ink Pearl display and 2GB of storage. Amazon’s Kindle can now be had for as little as $79. A second model with a touchscreen display and twice the memory starts at just $99, and its battery lasts for up to two months on a single charge. Amazon doesn’t share sales volumes of its Kindle devices but the company is widely believed to be among the top eReader vendors in the world as it teeters between the No.1 and No.2 spots alongside Barnes & Noble.

But eReaders will only take Amazon so far.

Amazon has been a leader in the online retail space for quite some time, and its line of Kindle eReaders represents its first foray into the hardware game. EBooks are big business for Amazon, but its more recent service additions have also been gaining traction. With new options for purchasing and streaming music and movies, customers had to rely on third party devices — computers, connected TVs, set top boxes and smartphones — to consume this new wave of Amazon content. But why not make it all available on a single Amazon-branded device that picks up where the Kindle left off?

The tablet market posed an amazing opportunity for Amazon. I can’t even recall the last time a market segment saw so much hype and so few success stories, and Amazon identified an opportunity to succeed where others were failing. Instead of building hardware that merely acted as a platter on which to serve the same software countless other vendors were unsuccessfully banking on, Amazon would build an end-to-end experience that covered hardware, software and content. After all, the only other vendor whose tablet offering addresses all three of these crucial areas of the user experience seems to be doing pretty well in the tablet space it redefined in early 2010.

Instead of setting out to build an iPad killer, Amazon set out to build a Kindle Fire.

The term “iPad killer” seems to describe any tablet launched by a popular vendor that cannot draw traffic to a news site unless said site includes a mention of Apple’s iPad in the headlines of stories written about said tablet. That’s really the only discernable link I’ve found between all of the slates that have been deemed iPad killers thus far. Another attribute most of them share, unfortunate though it may be, is that they don’t sell particularly well. There have been a few notable exceptions but in general, it seems these tablets are not well received by consumers or by enterprise customers.

If an iPad killer is a tablet that doesn’t grab people’s attention and often doesn’t sell particularly well, then the Kindle Fire is most certainly not an iPad killer.

Leading up to Amazon’s Kindle Fire, media tablets had for the most part been ill-conceived devices that were seemingly rushed out the door in an effort to capitalize on the hype surrounding the iPad. This strategy is not uncommon in business but in this particular case, companies forgot a key ingredient that drives competition: differentiation. With high price points, similar hardware and lackluster first-generation software (Honeycomb was Google’s first attempt at a tablet OS), the bulk of the iPad’s competition had very little to offer the common consumer that might distinguish it from the iPad in a positive way.

The Kindle Fire is a different beast.

Amazon attacked the tablet market on two fronts. First, it offered differentiation. Google’s Android operating system powers the Fire, but one wouldn’t know it to look at the device. Amazon used the open source Android OS as the framework on which it built its own unique user experience. It will continue its own development of the platform independent of Google’s future builds, and it maintains its own ecosystem outside of Google’s. Amazon has its own app store and its own suite of services.

The other piece to the Kindle Fire puzzle is pricing. At $199, Amazon’s tablet is $300 cheaper than the entry-level iPad and $630 less expensive than the 64GB model with embedded 3G. This was a very smart move by Amazon. The company will release more expensive models in the future — BGR exclusively reported preliminary details surrounding a 10-inch model due to be released next year — but Amazon’s first effort hits an amazing price point that creates a new space in the tablet market. It doesn’t compete with the iPad any more than a 32-inch flat panel Vizio TV competes with a 60-inch Samsung model. It’s a completely different animal.

I have read a number of Kindle Fire reviews — and there were plenty to choose from — that went to great lengths to compare Amazon’s tablet to the iPad. While these comparisons sometimes made for compelling reads and even more compelling headlines, they were not very useful. These devices are both tablets, yes, but to liken one to the other is as useful as likening a Mercedes S Class to a Hyundai Sonata. Both vehicles will get you from A to B, but in reality they serve very different purposes.

The S Class is designed to attract a certain type of customer. It offers utility, luxury and a driving experience that is the result of decades of evolution and many tens of millions of dollars in research and development. The S Class is designed to be seen. It outclasses and outperforms much of the competition, but it is about form as much as it is function. It is also assembled from high-end parts and materials, and it carries a relatively steep price tag to match. You see hundreds of them everywhere you go in metropolitan areas, but unless you have expendable income to throw around, you probably won’t buy one yourself.

The Sonata is designed to make a well-styled, capable sedan accessible to the masses. It looks more refined and performs better than other cars in its price range, and it also offers standard features that competing models do not. Even still, it doesn’t pretend to be an S Class and it most certainly doesn’t set out to kill the S Class.

The Sonata’s body isn’t quite as sleek and sophisticated as the Mercedes sedan, and it doesn’t come with nearly as many standard features. Its interior is also much more modest, forgoing supple leather and expensive woods in favor of more pedestrian materials. It won’t accelerate as quickly, it won’t corner as surely and it probably won’t turn any heads. It is a phenomenal value, however, and it touts a build quality and features that are anything but common on such an affordable car.

After using the device for about a week and a half now, I believe Amazon’s Kindle Fire will succeed where others have failed. The hardware is good but not great. The soft-touch materials are comfortable in the hand but the 4,400 mAh battery that hides within the device makes it a bit too heavy for prolonged reading without resting the tablet on a table or leg. The software is good but not great. It has a nice, simple interface that a wide range of users will be able to navigate easily, but it is not refined. The performance is good but not great. Many functions are fluid, as is game play and video playback, but there are often of hiccups and stutters while opening certain apps and performing other functions.

What did you expect? It’s a Sonata.

At $200, the Kindle Fire is a fantastic buy. It is intuitive and capable, and the integration with Amazon services is well-done. The home screen is divided into four sections: first is a status pane across the top that displays notifications, the time, Wi-Fi status and battery charge, and it provides access to settings. A menu section follows beneath, allowing users to navigation between different core features such as the book reader, music player, apps menu and video player. Next is a large area that lists all recent apps and books in a cover flow-like stream. Finally, there is a favorites section near the bottom where users can pin their most frequently accessed apps and books.

Each integrated app — Books, Music, Video and so on — is split into two sections that can be toggled at the top of the screen. The first is “Cloud,” which displays a list of icons on the shelves beneath it that represent all of the user’s content stored on Amazon’s servers. The second is “Device,” which lists locally stored content. There is also a link to Amazon’s store in the top right corner of each page. While it is all too easy to spend money on the Kindle Fire, I love how well Amazon’s services are integrated into each app.

While on the front page of the Books app, a single tap on an icon opens the book of my choice while a tap on the always-visible store link lets me search, browse and purchase books with ease. The Music app lists all of my content available for playback, and then another Store link takes me to Amazon’s music shop where I can purchase albums or individual tracks. The Video app offers a similar experience, but it also offers integration with Amazon Prime video streaming, Amazon’s Netflix-like service that provides unlimited access to streaming movies and TV shows. Don’t expect to find many new blockbuster movies in there, but the catalog is deep enough to provide a decent range of content.

Amazon’s apps page adheres to the same intuitive format. Apps are organized across wood shelves and a link to the Amazon Appstore can be found in the top right corner. Users won’t have access to all of the content found in Google’s Android Marketplace, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like Apple’s iOS App Store, the Marketplace is packed with garbage. Amazon’s curated approach is appreciated and there is more than enough great content available. I also love that Amazon offers one new paid app for free each day. It makes checking the app store on a daily basis habitual, thus encouraging browsing and ultimately benefiting developers.

The web browser is another bright spot for the Kindle Fire. Amazon’s Silk browser is impressively quick thanks to technology that offloads much of the grunt work to remote servers. Heavy pages seem to take a moment to begin loading as a result, but once the cloud-based portion begins pushing content to the tablet, I find pages load faster than they do on other comparable devices.

The Kindle Fire is not an iPad killer. It doesn’t kill anything, in fact. What it does, however, is offer users a solid experience and a comprehensive catalog of services that make it easy to access existing content and to find new content. It is very, very easy to use, which is something that cannot be said of some other tablets. A young child will be flying around the UI in no time, and his or her grandparents likely won’t take long to figure it out either. Operation is relatively smooth for the most part, but prospective buyers should expect the occasional hiccup from first-generation software running on $200 hardware. Every computer, smartphone and tablet on the planet stutters from time to time, so this is hardly a big deal.

Amazon took its time with the Kindle Fire and it shows. There is plenty of room for improvement, but this first-generation tablet is an intuitive, functional tablet that is as cohesive as it is affordable. It was built as a gateway into the many web-based services Amazon now offers and it succeeds in its mission. It might not kill any Apple products on its way to your door, but I’m sure the media will find plenty more Apple killers in the new year to draw your clicks. In the meantime, the Kindle Fire is a clear winner that will likely find itself atop Amazon’s list of best-sellers for quite some time.

End user pricing on media tablets is set to drop substantially in 2012 as competition further increases among vendors. A new report from analyst James Wang of DigiTimes on Thursday suggests that the average price of 10-inch tablets will drop to between $299 and $399 next year, and 7-inch models will average between $199 and $249. Wang further speculations that Amazon may lower the end user cost of its Kindle Fire tablet to $149 in order to maintain its pricing advantage. Regarding eReaders, the analyst sees shipment volume growing 31.4% in 2012 to 28.9 million units, and he believes the U.S. will continue to account for the bulk of eReader sales. EReader pricing is expected to drop as well next year, and Wang says Amazon’s Kindle could be sold for as little as $49 as eBook readers from other vendors like Barnes & Noble reach the $99 price point.

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Kobo, purveyor of eReaders and eBook software across a variety of platforms, announced on Tuesday that it will be acquired by Japan-based Rakuten. Rakuten will purchase 100% of outstanding shares of of Kobo for $315 million in cash. Based in Toronto, Ontario, Kobo was spun off of Canadian retailer Indigo in late 2009, and the company has struggled to compete against the likes of Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the eBook space. ”We are very excited about this next step,” said Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani in a statement. ”Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies, including Buy.com in the US, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, and Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, and of course, Rakuten Ichiba in Japan.” Kobo’s full press release follows below.

Rakuten to Acquire Kobo

Kobo, a Global Leader in eReading Expands Rakuten Offering to Include eBooks and eReaders Worldwide

TOKYO and TORONTO, November 8/9, 2011 — Rakuten, Inc. (JASDAQ: 4755) and Kobo Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Rakuten intends to acquire 100% of total issued and outstanding shares of Kobo for US$315 million in cash.

Kobo was founded by and spun out of Indigo, the largest book, gift and specialty toy retailer in Canada, in December, 2009. Since that time, Kobo has become a fierce competitor in the eBook marketplace, with a family of innovative eReaders, a wide range of eReading apps, one of the largest eBook catalogues, an innovative social platform and retail partners around the globe.

The acquisition marks a major step forward for Rakuten, one of the world’s top 3 e-commerce companies by revenue, as it continues to expand its unique B2B2C borderless e-commerce business globally, by adding an ecosystem to provide downloadable media products to consumers, starting with eBooks.

Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten, commented on the acquisition, “We are very excited about this next step. Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies, including Buy.com in the US, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, and Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, and of course, Rakuten Ichiba in Japan.”

“From a business and cultural perspective this is a perfect match,” commented Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. “We share a common vision of creating a content experience that is both global and social. Rakuten is already one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, while Kobo is the most social eBook service on the market and one of the world’s largest eBook stores with over 2.5 million titles. This transaction will greatly strengthen our position in our current markets and allow us to diversify quickly into other countries and e-commerce categories.”

Upon closing the acquisition, Kobo will continue to maintain its headquarters, management team and employees based in Toronto, Ontario.

The global eBook market is one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer technology industry, with a compound annual growth rate of 36% through 2015*. The global content market size is also expected to grow dramatically to reach approximately US$10.6 billion per year by 2015 (estimates exclude China).

*Sources: Based on forecasts by IDC, Yankee, BCG analysis & NRI for Japan 1USD= 80JPY

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by Canadian regulatory authorities in accordance with the Investment Canada Act and is expected to close in Q1 2012.

We’re live from Barnes & Noble’s press conference here in New York City where the bookseller is expected to take the wraps off its sequel to the Nook Color tablet. Though the firm used a heavily customized, unrecognizable version of Google’s Android platform to power the original Nook Color, it is still one of the most popular Android tablets in the short history of the media tablet category. Barnes & Noble has reportedly shipped more than 3 million Nook Color slates to date, and with Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire ready to heat things up beginning next week, we’re hoping B&N has a few surprises up its sleeve this morning to keep the space competitive. Hit the break for our live coverage and don’t forget to refresh the page often, or enable auto-refresh, for all the latest news as it breaks.

9:55AM:Ok guys, we're seated and people are still filing in. No 5-minute warning yet so we'll probably get started a few minutes late.

9:59AM:Ok! They just announced that the show is about to start.

10:00AM:B&N CEO William Lynch is now taking the stage.

10:01AM:No company in digital content has grown faster in the past 12 months has grown faster that B&N. They now sell 27% of eBooks.

10:02AM:The Nook Color was the first color eReader with tablet functionality. "We sold millions."

10:03AM:The Nook Color has access to the largest catalog of magazines and children's content. It's the number 2 tablet in the world behind the iPad.

10:04AM:Well that was fast! Lynch just announced the Nook tablet and we're watching a video.

10:05AM:As you can see, it looks just like the original Nook Color, and it's being billed as B&N's lightest, fastest tablet yet.

10:06AM:It's hands-down the best media tablet in the 7-inch class. 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM.

10:07AM:It weight under 1 pound and it can be held comfortably during extended periods of time. If features a "Vivid View" display built by LG that B&N is billing as a huge breakthrough in the tablet space.

10:07AM:The Nook Tablet gets free access to AT&T and B&N WiFi hotspots.

10:08AM:Battery life = up to 9 hours of video! It also supports up to 11.5 hours of reading time.

10:09AM:It supports video playback up to 1080p, and it comes pre-loaded with apps for Netflix and Hulu Plus. "It has the deepest Netflix integration of any tablet."

10:09AM:

10:10AM:The Nook bookstore is now home to over 2.5 million books.

10:11AM:The Nook Tablet supports a feature called "read and record," while allows parents to record themselves reading a book. The child can then play the recordings back at a later time.

10:12AM:B&N already has the largest library of top magazines, and they're expanding their library even further alongside the launch of the Nook Tablet.

10:13AM:B&N has been working with thousands of developers to build a huge catalog of apps for the Nook Tablet. Yup, Angry Birds will be there at launch...

10:14AM:It ships with 16GB of internal storage and it supports up 32GB of external storage as well

10:14AM:On top of all that storage, you also get Nook Cloud access for cloud-based storage.

10:16AM:Lynch says the Nook Tablet is clearly the better choice this holiday season versus the Kindle Fire.

10:17AM:The Nook Tablet features a better display with no air gap, double the storage plus expandable memory, and the Nook Tablet is also lighter.

10:17AM:"Nook tablet is lighter than Kindle Fire at under a pound."

10:17AM:The Nook Tablet was hand-designed while the Kindle Fire used the BlackBerry PlayBook design, and it sports twice the RAM.

10:18AM:"Content will look and render better on the Nook Tablet than on the Kindle Fire."

10:19AM:The Nook Tablet is also supported by people at Barnes & Noble stores. Kindle Fire? Good luck getting support...

10:19AM:The Nook tablet will cost 249. Pre-orders start now and it becomes available next week.

10:22AM:Jamie Iannone is now on stage to discuss B&N's digital portfolio. "The Nook Color is the best selling Android tablet in the world," and now the price is being cut to 199.

10:22AM:B&N is pushing out an update to the original Nook Color that features 100 new improvements.

10:23AM:"The Nook Color will have access to all of the content we announced with the Nook Tablet."

10:24AM:B&N is adding fast access to the web and email, along with tons of new content sources.

10:24AM:

10:24AM:The black and white Nook touch is being updated with a new E Ink display as well.

10:25AM:It will also feature a new Best-Text technology that renders text more clearly than any other E Ink display. Beyond that, it sports up to 2 months of battery life.

10:26AM:Starting today, the Nook SimpleTouch is just 99, down from its launch price of 149.

10:27AM:The Nook SimpleTouch (new name for the black and white reader) features a better display and twice the battery life of Amazon's competitive offerings.

10:28AM:"No annoying ads, whether the device is on or off." The crowd chuckled. Amazon charges an extra $40 to turn off ads.

10:29AM:The previous-gen black and white eReader is getting an update that will add the new page-turning tech from the updated SimpleTouch.

10:29AM:The Nook SimpleTouch is available today.

10:30AM:New Nook Digital Shops will be set up in B&N stores to show off and promote Nook products.

10:32AM:That's it! We're going to go try to get some hands-on time with the new Nook Tablet. Thanks for tuning in!

Barnes & Noble is holding a press conference on Monday morning where the company is expected to unveil a new color eBook reader that will go head-to-head with Amazon’s upcoming Kindle Fire tablet. According to a recent report, the slate in question will be Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color 2 and it will feature a 7-inch 1024 x 600-pixel display, 16GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4 processor. Rumors also suggest the tablet will be priced at $249, $50 more than the hotly anticipated Amazon Kindle Fire, but nothing is confirmed until Barnes & Noble executives take the stage on Monday morning.

Bookmark this link, which will go live shortly before the event begins tomorrow morning, and make sure to head there for our live coverage of Barnes & Noble’s press conference! Coverage will begin just before 10:00 a.m. EST / 7:00 a.m. PST.

Just ahead of the release of Amazon’s highly anticipated Kindle Fire tablet, the company has added a new perk for Amazon Prime subscribers that could be the icing on the cake for future Fire owners. Beginning immediately, all Kindle eBook readers and the Kindle Fire tablet will have access to what Amazon has dubbed Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, a stash of thousands of books that may be “borrowed” indefinitely for free. Users may borrow one title per month, and the list of available books currently includes more than 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers. “Owning a Kindle just got even better. Today, we’re introducing a new Prime benefit built for Kindle: The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. “Prime Members now have exclusive access to a huge library of books to read on any Kindle device at no additional cost and with no due dates.” BGR went hands-on with the Kindle Fire during Amazon’s press conference, and we can definitely see the retail giant making a dent in the tablet market quickly with this $199 offering, which launches on November 15th. The plethora of value-added services available on the device for Prime members will only improve the slate’s odds in a crowded market currently dominated by Apple. Some analysts believe Amazon could sell as many as 5 million tablets during the fourth quarter alone. Amazon’s Lending Library press release follows below.

Introducing The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library

With an Amazon Prime membership, Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free – including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates

Books can be borrowed and read on all Kindle E Ink devices and Kindle Fire

SEATTLE—November 2, 2011—Today, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced the launch of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.  With an Amazon Prime membership, Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free – including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. No other e-reader or ebookstore offers such a service.  With an annual Prime membership, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is included at no additional cost.  Millions of Prime members enjoy free two-day shipping,  unlimited streaming of nearly 13,000 movies and TV shows, and now thousands of books to borrow for free with a Kindle.

“Owning a Kindle just got even better.  Today, we’re introducing a new Prime benefit built for Kindle: The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “Prime Members now have exclusive access to a huge library of books to read on any Kindle device at no additional cost and with no due dates.”

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library offers access to a wide array of categories and genres in fiction and non-fiction, and includes popular titles such as Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Big Short and Liars’ Poker by Michael Lewis, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen —plus award-winning books such as The Finkler Question and Guns, Germs, and Steel, memoirs such as Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential , and motivational books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Just as with any other Kindle book, your notes, highlights and bookmarks in borrowed books will be saved, so you’ll have them later if you purchase or re-borrow the book.  Books are borrowed from a Kindle device, and customers can have one book out at a time. When customers want to borrow a new book, any borrowed book can easily be returned right from their device.

Titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library come from a range of publishers under a variety of terms.  For the vast majority of titles, Amazon has reached agreement with publishers to include titles for a fixed fee.  In some cases, Amazon is purchasing a title each time it is borrowed by a reader under standard wholesale terms as a no-risk trial to demonstrate to publishers the incremental growth and revenue opportunity that this new service presents.

“The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a great new benefit for Kindle owners and an entirely new growth opportunity for authors and publishers,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. “With the growth in Prime membership and the recent addition of Prime Instant Video, we’ve been able to broaden our relationships with movie and TV studios such as CBS, Fox, and NBCUniversal and significantly increase their revenue.  We’re excited to expand that investment to books – with this launch, we expect three immediate results: Kindle owners will read even more, publisher revenues will grow, and authors will see larger royalty checks.”

“We’re excited to offer titles from our ebook ‘Chapters’ series, which covers some of the world’s most popular destinations, to members of Kindle Owners’ Lending Library,” says John Boris, EVP Lonely Planet. “Our ebooks have done incredibly well on Kindle and this is a great way to showcase our travel expertise to an even broader audience.”

“We’re excited about any program that helps readers discover our authors and their books,” said David Nussbaum, Chief Executive and Chairman of F+W Media Inc. “We think this will lead to more people reading F+W’s books, and more profit for our authors.”

To learn more about the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, visit www.amazon.com/kindleownerslendinglibrary. To learn about all of the additional benefits included with Amazon Prime, or to start an Amazon Prime free trial visit www.amazon.com/prime.

Global shipments of eReaders are expected to skyrocket this year, ballooning 183% from last year to reach 34.8 million units. According to new data from the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute, part of Taiwan’s Institute for Information Industry, 12.3 million dedicated eBook readers shipped in 2010. The figure is relatively in line with earlier estimates of 12.8 million units from market research firm IDC. The MIC estimates that global eReader shipments in 2011 will total up to 34.8 million units, and 2012 shipments could grow a further 46% to surpass 50 million units. The firm sees the U.S. as the biggest growth market during that period, and the eReader landscape is expected to shift moving forward. “Consumers prefer e-readers with multimedia functions, MIC said, the overall performance, colorization, and product differentiation are key factors for market success,” Taiwan Economic News noted in its coverage of MIC’s report. “Cross-industry alliances will also be decisive for players in the new game, the center said.”

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As Amazon prepares to launch its first tablet offering this fall, the tech press seems to be in agreement that the device will give owners deeply integrated access to the company’s suite of digital services. It will download books from Amazon’s Kindle book store, stream music from the company’s Cloud Player service, pull down movies from Amazon Instant Video, and provide a window into Amazon’s numerous additional services. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is also working on a new service its tablet offering might take advantage of down the road: Netflix for books. Read on for more.

The subscription eBook service is currently in early development stages according to the report, so it may be some time before anything launches. If launched, Amazon’s service will allow users to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to a collection of Kindle books, though the company is still trying to get publishers on board so it is unclear what kind of titles might be available.

Amazon is reportedly trying to position the service in such a way that a catalog of older titles would be made available to Amazon Prime subscribers, but the hope is that Amazon isn’t stopping there. Access to new titles and best-sellers will likely be paramount to the success of the service, so the case will have to be made that such a service would create new revenue opportunities for popular titles as opposed to stripping sales of individual titles, as logic might dictate.

The report also notes that publishers are worried about Amazon’s proposed subscription eBook service as it may strain their relationships with other book vendors.

We received a tip from an unproven source claiming to have knowledge of discussions within Apple to possibly purchase Barnes & Noble. While this might seem like a strange move at first, it actually makes a whole lot of sense. Apple would be able to take Barnes & Noble’s vast digital library of books and publications, and fold them into Apple’s own iBooks store. Apple would have no use for the NOOK, and that would likely be discontinued in this scenario. Apple could then convert some of the brick and mortar Barnes & Noble stores into Apple stores and close the rest. It’s out there, and with a price most likely around $1 billion to $1.5 billion, it might be a stretch (though it would barely make a dent in Apple’s giant pile of cash). It also almost makes too much sense for Apple to do this, said another source of ours, mentioning that Apple doesn’t make moves that appear logical to most outside observers at the time. This unproven source also said that iTunes 11 would be released in September along with iOS 5 and iCloud, and will support reading iBooks on computers as well as textbook purchases and rentals.

We just spent some time with Barnes & Noble’s just-announced eReader, the all-new NOOK, and we have to say… we’re impressed. From the size, to the design, to the gorgeous new E Ink Pearl display, this device is leaps and bounds better than the previous-generation NOOK. What’s more, we think it will definitely push Barnes & Noble even further in the growing eReader space, and it should have the team over at Amazon working overtime on its next Kindle design. The exterior of all-new NOOK is composed entirely of soft-touch rubber that feels amazing compared to the hard plastic found on other readers. The new E Ink display is fantastic, and we definitely appreciated the work Barnes & Noble put into improving the seizure-inducing page transitions that plague all eReaders. They’re still there, but they’re much improved compared to older readers. The addition of a 6-inch touchscreen makes interacting with the device much more enjoyable than non-touch eBook readers, and it also helps make the size of the device perfect for carrying in a small bag or even a coat pocket. Barnes & Noble’s is taking pre-orders for its all-new NOOK starting now, and the device will begin shipping on or around June 10th for $139. In the meantime, definitely check out our hands-on gallery below!

While Microsoft is busy showing off the latest and greatest its Windows Phone platform has to offer, Barnes & Noble is across town getting ready to take the wraps off its brand new NOOK eReader. Tablets like the Apple iPad 2 and BlackBerry PlayBook are taking center stage right now, but these jacks of all trades have a long way to go before they can even come close to matching the reading experience afforded by dedicated eReaders. Avid readers and casual readers alike can appreciate the remarkable battery life and unique features that only a dedicated eBook reader can afford, and good luck trying to soak up the sun while reading a book on your iPad — right now, only an E Ink display can remain perfectly visible and glare-free while combating the sun’s rays. So what new features does Barnes and Noble have in store for its latest NOOK eReader? Hit the break for our live coverage of the unveiling, which will begin just before 10:00 a.m. EST, and don’t forget to refresh the page often for all the latest updates!

9:43AM:All right — everything looks like it'll kick off on schedule at 10:00 a.m. We're inside and sitting while the rest of press/bloggers start funneling in.

9:51AM:In case you're still not convinced that a new NOOK will be unveiled today, I think the t-shirts might be a pretty good sign that the rumors were right.

9:57AM:The room is getting pretty full now, as is the Wi-Fi, so we should be getting things started any minute now.

9:59AM:Switched over to our Verizon 4G LTE MiFi. The rest of these suckers can have fun on Wi-Fi.

10:00AM:Ok, they just announced that we're about to get this party started.

10:02AM:Two minute warning has been issued.

10:04AM:Barnes and Noble CEO William Lynch just took the stage.

10:05AM:B&N now owns over 25% in the eBook market — and it's still the leader in the physical book market with 17%

10:06AM:B&N is the leader in the Android tablet market here in the U.S., Lynch claims.

10:08AM:Lynch is talking about B&N's successes with NOOK apps. The company has millions of users and its app platform has seen great success thus far.

10:09AM:Lynch is also stressing B&N's stellar customer service, which is definitely a huge advantage over the competition.

10:10AM:B&N is the clear leader on the product side as well, Lynch claims. The NOOK was the first eReader to support lending, for example, and B&N is the only company that lets users read full books for free while in a book store.

10:11AM:NOOK Newsstand features 160 top publications, and the company has surpassed 1.5 million single copies sold — more than Apple or any other digital newsstand.

10:12AM:NOOK Color has been a home run, but there are still customers looking for a pure reading experience. I think we all know where this is going...

10:14AM:The all-new NOOK!

10:14AM:They're playing a video now — man, this little guy is sleek.

10:15AM:The all-new NOOK is the easiest eReader on the market to use. If features a 6-inch touchscreen display and it weighs just 7.5 ounces.

10:15AM:Battery life? How about up to 2 months on a single charge. Damn!

10:16AM:The display is an E Ink pearl display that eliminates the weird eReader page turns and replaces it with a proprietary transition.

10:17AM:The new NOOK will cost just $139 when it launches later this summer.

10:17AM:It sports just one button — 37 fewer than the Kindle, Lynch joked.

10:17AM:He's stressing the simplicity of the interface, and it definitely looks easy to use.

10:19AM:This thing makes the Kindle looks like a beast — and it has the same-sized screen.

10:21AM:B&N's President of Digital Products is on stage now to go over the NOOK's features.

10:21AM:The new NOOK has 80% less flashing during page turns than the Kindle. That might sound insignificant, but any eReader user will tell you how annoying the seizure-inducing page turn flashing can be.

10:22AM:The NOOK can hold 1,000 books with 2GB of internal storage, but is also supports SD cards for another 32GB of storage.

10:24AM:The touchscreen really enhances the experience. It makes looking up words in the integrated dictionary or making notes a breeze.

10:26AM:Of course the NOOK aslo features built-in Wi-Fi and B&N's great digital book store for buying new books right on the device. Wi-Fi is free in Barnes and Noble locations and any AT&T hotspot.

10:26AM:The new NOOK features "NOOK Friends," a book recommendation-based social network. Users can also share recommendations via Facebook or Twitter right from the device.

10:27AM:mynook.com will launch next month, as well, giving users another way to browse and buy books.

10:27AM:The new NOOK is "the simplest eReader ever created."

10:28AM:William Lynch is coming back on stage now to wrap things up.

10:29AM:"It's the best dedicated eReader on the market," Lynch said. The new NOOK is available for pre-order immediately for $139, and it will begin shipping on or around June 10th.

10:29AM:That's it folks! Time for some hand-on with the new NOOK.