Barnes & Noble announced on Friday that it has updated NOOK for Android eReader application with access to newspapers and magazines. Users with 7-inch 800 x 480 resolution tablets running Android OS 2.1 and higher — that includes the Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1, XOOM, G-Slate, and others — can now view more than 120 magazines including popular periodicals such as Esquire, Maxim, Rolling Stone, and Popular Science, as well as national newspapers such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune. Users can choose to access the content with a free 14-day trial, a subscription, or by purchasing issues individually. The update is free and should be available in the Android Market now. Hit the jump for the full release.

Barnes & Noble Updates NOOK™ for Android™ App, Gives Tablet Users Access to Largest Digital Periodical Offering on Android

More than 140 NOOK Newsstand™ Titles Including Interactive Magazines
with Exclusive ArticleView™ Now Available to Android Tablet Customers

Optimized Reading Experience for Most 7-Inch and Larger Tablets
Including Honeycomb

Free App Now Available in Android Market, V CAST Apps,
Samsung Apps, GetJar, and AppsLib

New York, New York – May 13, 2011 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced an updated version of its popular, free NOOK for Android eReading application that brings the most comprehensive selection of digital periodicals to customers with Android™ tablets including more than 140 top magazine and newspaper brands from ESPN The Magazine and The Economist to Food & Wine and Us Weekly. To take advantage of large and extra large, high-resolution Android tablet screens, NOOK for Android now offers customers an optimized library grid view and reading experience with enhanced book margins and line spacing, aswell as an improved shopping experience and more. The new app features are available for popular 7-inch and larger tablets using Android OS 2.1 and higher (Honeycomb).

Today’s announcement marks the largest digital newsstand offering for Android tablet customers to date, with more than 140 of the best daily, weekly and monthlyperiodicals, all optimized for high-resolution displays in rich color. Barnes & Noble’s interactive NOOK Magazine™ experience, previouslyavailable only to NOOK Color™ Reader’s Tablet™ customers, is now available to the Android tablet community, featuring more than 120 popular titles such as Esquire, Maxim, Men’s Health, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Popular Science, PC Magazine, Elle, O, The Oprah Magazine, Travel + Leisure and many more. NOOK for Android customers with large tablets can also enjoyfavorite NOOK Newspapers™ including USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune. All can be enjoyed with a 14-day free trial, via subscription or purchased in single issue form.

With NOOK for Android on larger tablets, magazine reading is easy and engaging with full-color pages in landscape and portrait mode, and Barnes & Noble’s exclusive ArticleView technology (formerly available only on NOOK Color) which features only the article’s text, customized to the reader’s favorite style, on a central panel on the display. NOOK Magazines also feature a universal, easy-to-use reading experience with a slider to jump to the desired page, pinch and zoom to enlarge images and more.

“With our free, updated NOOK for Android application, we’re delivering customers with Android tablets a great optimized reading experience and access to the largest ever collection of interactive magazines, as well as top newspapers, all optimized for high-resolution displays,” said Jamie Iannone, President of Digital Products at Barnes & Noble. “Using their Android tablets, customers can enjoy our collection of more than two million digital books, as well as their morning paper and latest magazines,delivered right to their device through their NOOK for Android app, for an amazing periodical experience which includes our innovative ArticleView feature.”

NOOK Newsstand and the optimized book reading experience on NOOK for Android will be available for customers using 7-inch and larger Android OS 2.1 and higher (Honeycomb) tablets with 800 x 480 (160 DPI or less) or higher screen resolution, and include Samsung Galaxy Tab™, Motorola XOOM™, LGG-Slate™ and ARCHOS internet tablets, among others. NOOK for Android customers on smartphones will also enjoy minor performance enhancements.

NOOK for Android gives customers with Android smartphones and tablets access to Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOK Bookstore™, one of the world’s largest digital content catalogs, with the most NOOK Books™ priced at $9.99 or less. As part of Barnes & Noble’s promise to “Read What You Love, Anywhere You Like™,” customers can enjoy NOOK Books from their Barnes & Noble digital library on their NOOK Color, NOOK eReader devices and mobile and computing devices using free NOOK eReading software or apps.

Expanded App Availability
To make it easy for Android smartphone and tablet customers to find and download the free NOOK for Android app, Barnes & Noble has expanded availability for the free app to include Android Market, V CAST Apps from Verizon Wireless, Samsung Apps, GetJar, and AppsLib, with more to come. NOOK for Android willalso be pre-loaded or made available in future firmware upgrades for some of the current leading and highly anticipated Android tablets coming to market. Customers can learn more about NOOK for Android v2.6.1 at www.bn.com/nookforandroid.

Just one day after Apple made its App Store subscription service available to publishers, Google has already responded by announcing a similar service for its Android platform. The solution will also work in Web-based clients, allowing publishers to reach users on multiple platforms with a single solution. Much like Apple’s implementation, Google’s One Pass provides users with a single interface where they can access and manage all of their digital newspaper, magazine and other content subscriptions. Unlike App Store subscriptions, however, Google gives publishers much more freedom with regard to pricing models and flexibility. Publishers will also be able to give free or reduced subscriptions to paid print subscribers, and they can even utilize a freemium model if they so desire. Hit the break for a video from Google outlining the One Pass product.

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Apple on Tuesday announced that its new App Store subscription model is available to all publishers. First introduced with News Corp’s The Daily, Apple’s new subscription model allows publishers to charge a recurring fee for content such as digital magazines and newspapers. The feature has been highly anticipated by publishers, who often claimed that the lack of a subscription model for publishers on the iPad was the main reason magazines and newspapers have not gained the traction many had hoped for. Subscription models now available to publishers include weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly and yearly subscriptions. On the user side, iOS device owners will be able to manage all of their App Store subscriptions from a single page. Hit the jump for Apple’s full press release.

Apple Launches Subscriptions on the App Store
CUPERTINO, California—February 15, 2011—Apple® today announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store℠, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. This is the same innovative digital subscription billing service that Apple recently launched with News Corp.’s “The Daily” app.

Subscriptions purchased from within the App Store will be sold using the same App Store billing system that has been used to buy billions of apps and In-App Purchases. Publishers set the price and length of subscription (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly). Then with one-click, customers pick the length of subscription and are automatically charged based on their chosen length of commitment (weekly, monthly, etc.). Customers can review and manage all of their subscriptions from their personal account page, including canceling the automatic renewal of a subscription. Apple processes all payments, keeping the same 30 percent share that it does today for other In-App Purchases.

“Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers.”

Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple. Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.

Protecting customer privacy is a key feature of all App Store transactions. Customers purchasing a subscription through the App Store will be given the option of providing the publisher with their name, email address and zip code when they subscribe. The use of such information will be governed by the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s. Publishers may seek additional information from App Store customers provided those customers are given a clear choice, and are informed that any additional information will be handled under the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s.

The revolutionary App Store offers more than 350,000 apps to consumers in 90 countries, with more than 60,000 native iPad™ apps. Customers of the more than 160 million iOS devices around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

The Wall Street Journal has chimed in with its assessment of the Apple tablet and has described the many ways Steve Jobs is supposedly aiming to reshape how we read books, browse newspapers, play games and consume TV with Apple’s new tablet device. Long a stronghold, Apple is reportedly courting the educational market and has developed this tablet with electronic  textbook technology which will presumably take the e-book reading experience a step beyond the current Kindle-experience. The Apple tablet may also reportedly fill the gap that exists for newspapers who have been clamoring for a digital distribution channel that offers a better overall experience than what is provided by a 6 inch e-ink device. Apple is rumored to be in talks with The New York Times, Conde Nast Publications, HarperCollins and News Corp in this endeavor. Hit the jump for Apple’s rumored plans for television and gaming on its tablet device.

Anyone who has owned a 9 to 10-inch slate device knows that it hit the sweet spot for casual movie or television watching and Apple may try to capitilize on the feature by bringing a “Best of TV” subscription-based TV service to the tablet. Rumors suggest that Apple has been negotiating with CBS and Disney which owns ABC to bring four to six shows per channel to the tablet. As was the case with the iPod touch, Apple is also thought to be collaborating with Electronic Arts to showcase the gaming capabilities of its tablet device. Other features potentially include virtual sticky notes, facial recognition technology that recognizes each user presumably to deliver user-specific content, and , of course, a virtual onscreen keyboard.

Details on how Apple is going to integrate these diverse services into the tablet is sparse but at least some of the content may be accessible from iTunes which may be moved to a cloud-based infrastructure following Apple’s purchase of Lala. The other unknown is the wireless connectivity which is needed for such a device. Rumors are hot and heavy that the tablet will feature a Qualcomm chipset that may support Verizon Wireless EV-DO. Qualcomm also makes the Gobi chipset which includes GSM/HSDPA in addition to CDMA/EV-DO connectivity so the tablet may not be a carrier-specific device.  Anyone else going to be glued to their computer next Wednesday to see how these rumors pan out and what other surprises Apple may have up its sleeve?

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Amazon has definitely had some issues keeping the wraps on its readers and it looks like the Kindle DX fell victim to the trend. Of course these most recent leaks weren’t quite as bad as the Kindle 2 we scooped over four months ahead of its official launch, but never the less we basically knew all there was to know about Amazon’s super-sized e-book reader ahead of today’s announcement. Well actually, there were a few surprises tucked away in Amazon’s pocket — namely automatic screen rotation which is certainly a welcome addition. The rest, such as its specs, annotation capabilities, device size and its new education-centric features were already pretty well covered. Pre-ordering is now live and the DX ships this Summer — Price of admission: $489.

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When it rains, it pours and information is pouring out about the rumored “super-sized” Amazon Kindle. The upcoming Kindle, now known as the Kindle DX, will pack a full-featured 9.7-inch electronic ink display, 5-way navigation button and a QWERTY keyboard into its large white housing. It basically looks like the designers took a Kindle 2 and stretched its screen from 6 inches to 9.7 inches, and then squished the keyboard in the process. The new Kindle DX will reportedly feature an improved web browser, the ability to add annotations in addition to notes and highlights and a long awaited native PDF reader. In addition to newspaper and periodicals, the Kindle DX is designed to support textbooks and, according to the Wall Street Journal, a special edition packed with pre-installed textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar is being released as part of a college trial. Lev Gonick, chief information officer for Case Western Reserve University, claims that a lucky bunch of select college students at Case Western Reserve, as well as Pace, Princeton, Reed, Arizona State, and the Darden School at the University of Virginia are signed up to test out this new device starting in the Fall semester. Sweet! Hit the jump for a few blurry images of the Kindle DX seemingly snagged from a slide show presentation.

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