With fresh Amazon digital reading devices heading to market, Barnes & Noble has cut the price of its Nook GlowLight ereader to $119, CNET reports.
The new price has surfaced at two retailers – Target and Walmart – making it quite unlikely that the change is in any way a fluke or coincidence. As you might have expected, the $119 price point is equal to the lowest priced forthcoming Amazon Kindle Paperwhite ereader.
However, that Amazon device will contain advertisements, while the Nook GlowLight does not. How concerned consumers are over the existence of those ‘offers’ I leave to you, but the Nook line is moving itself firmly into price/value competition with this price cut.
The fact that Walmart is selling the newly reduced Nook unit matters, as Amazon has recently pulled its devices from that retailer. This is not part of a retreat by the famed Internet retailer, at least not in a geographic sense; the company recently began to sell its Kindle devices in Japan, for example. However, given its abdication of the Walmart chain, the newly price-reduced Nook could perhaps be in position to pick up new market share.
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And while Amazon is pulling back from physical retail, Barnes & Noble is pursuing it, adding Dixons Retail to its roster of chains that sell its units.
We therefore have two distinct retail strategies for two different lines of digital reading devices, each sporting the same price tag. Let’s see who wins.
In related news, the Kindle Fire HD has seen adoption rates that places its web traffic at roughly 10% of the larger Kindle Fire line.
Top Image Credit: Hey Paul
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