Barnes & Noble and Microsoft are currently tied up in two separate legal battles, one being heard by the Department of Justice and the other by the International Trade Commission. In March 2011, like previous Android vendors, Microsoft accused Barnes & Noble’s NOOK and NOOK Color of infringing on the company’s patents. The software giant, which takes in roughly $450 million a year through Android royalties, was looking to license the infringed patents to the bookseller, but the company fir...

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 &...

Pew Research conducted a pre-holiday survey among people age 16 and older between November 16th and December 21st, and two additional surveys of adults age 18 and older in January. The data found that during the holiday gift giving season, sales of tablets and eBook readers nearly doubled from 10% to 19%. In the same time frame, the number of Americans owning at least one of these devices jumped from 18% to 29%. More than 33% of those living in households earning more than $75,000 a year own a tablet, with ...

Barnes & Noble on Thursday reported its results for the second fiscal quarter of 2012, in which it revealed its Nook business has seen stellar growth over the last year. The company said that its Nook business, which includes sales of tablets, eReaders and eBooks, pulled in $220 million in the second quarter, up 85% from the same quarter last year. Barnes & Noble did not reveal how many Nook devices it sold during the quarter but said that it expects to sell “millions of devices” during th...

If you are a company that has developed an Android product of any sort, chances are Microsoft has attempted to sue you or drag you in to an expensive licensing agreement. Samsung, HTC and ViewSonic are just a few of the larger firms that currently have deals in place with Microsoft. Barnes & Noble is the latest Android device maker to find itself in Microsoft’s line of fire, but it is not giving up the battle so easily. The retailer recently asked the Justice Department to probe the Redmond-based ...

Barnes & Noble took the wraps off of the Nook Tablet during a press event in New York City on Monday morning. The device runs Android 2.3, has a 7-inch LG “Vivid View” display, 16GB of expandable storage, 1GB of RAM and a dual-core 1GHz processor. It also weighs under one pound and supports up to 11.5 hours of reading time on a single charge. Barnes & Noble said the device will have free access to AT&T and Barnes & Noble Wi-Fi hotspots. The Nook Tablet has the “deepest Netfli...

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 wit...

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...

Barnes & Noble is holding a press conference in New York City on Monday and it looks like the rumors surrounding a possible Nook Color 2 announcement could be true. According to Engadget, which recently published a purported image of the new device along with specs, the Nook Color 2 will look identical to the current model. The tablet reportedly sports a 7-inch IPS color display with a 1024 x 600-pixel resolution, 16GB of storage, a dual-core TI OMAP 4 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM and more. In...

Barnes & Noble sent out invitations on Monday to a press conference that will be held on November 7th in New York City. The event will focus on the company’s Nook eReader devices, although it is unclear what will be announced. We suspect Barnes & Noble will unveil the Nook Color 2, an Android tablet that reportedly offers a 7-inch display. The Nook Color 2 will likely go head-to-head with the Amazon Kindle Fire this holiday season and it may be in Barnes & Noble’s best interest to dro...

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...

Sony is expected to introduce a new family of eReader devices to challenge the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook devices next month. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sony Electronics’ vice president of digital reading Phil Lubell said that the new eReaders will offer both software and hardware enhancements, although he wasn’t specific on what exactly the changes are. Lubell said the devices will hit the market ahead of his company’s S1 and S2 Android tablets. AT&T announced yester...

IDC recently published a report that provided a snapshot view of the tablet and eReader markets. The company noted that in the first quarter, for the first time ever, Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Color lead the eReader pack ahead of Amazon’s Kindle. Even though Barnes & Noble just introduced the “all new NOOK,” a black and white device, IDC says that the lack of a color screen on Amazon’s Kindle “clearly impacted the company’s previous dominance in the eReader marke...

During its earnings call on Tuesday, Barnes & Noble’s chief executive officer William Lynch discussed several figures related to book sales — the most interesting of which is that eBooks are flying off the digital shelves. “We now sell three times as many digital books as all formats of physical books combined on BN.com,” Lynch said during the call, noting that the Barnes & Noble NOOK’s market share has increased slightly to 27%, up from 25% last quarter. Similarly, the firm̵...