Thanks in large part to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, smaller tablets are here for the masses and here to stay.  With offerings from them, Samsung and Google just to name a few, the $200 7-inch Android tablet is ours for the taking.  I thank Amazon and Barnes & Noble for the price because it was really their marketing strategy that brought the tablet to that magical number.

Starting with the Nook Color and running the gamut from the Kindle Fire, the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire HD, these two companies offered a premium tablet at a rock-bottom price, with the idea that they would break even or even take a loss on the hardware in exchange for the services they would gain through it.  To them it’s not a device at all, it’s a portal to their marketplace.  They tweak, modify and lock down the Android operating system to make it all but unusable for anything they don’t approve of, at least to the average consumer.  There are other more open options available to today for the more tech-savvy, but at this price point it’s Joe Consumer that’s buying and ease of use is paramount.  Say what you will about these closed-system machines, they are easy to use within their native environment.

Just a few days ago Barnes & Noble fired the latest salvo in this battle with the introduction of their new Nook HD, a 7-inch tablet with specs better than anything on the market, including a display with higher resolution than the new iPad Mini and the presence of a microSD slot for expandable memory, something sorely lacking in the Kindle Fire HD and even the Google Nexus 7.  

The problem with the new Nook HD isn’t the hardware, though.  All of the technical magic in the world won’t help their market share if the buyer can’t do anything with it.  I find it very hard to believe that Barnes & Noble thinks for even a second that it can compete with Amazon’s ecosystem.  One of the main reasons that the Nook Color and Nook Tablet continued to sell as well as they did after the introduction of the Fire and Fire HD was the ease with which the security measures could be bypassed.  In fact, there is a company that sells a microSD card that, when inserted into the Nook Color or Nook Tablet allows the user to dual-boot to either the native Barnes & Noble version of Android or a “pure” Android operating system, allowing the user to utilize it as an open Android tablet without the restrictions put in place by B&N.  These cards can be had online for $40 online, a pittance for dual-boot capability.

It seems, however that Barnes & Noble has failed to see this marketing advantage, as the new HD model is locked down harder than the Color or Tablet were.  This seems like a huge step backward in the device’s business model to me.  In fact, I would say if they offered it with the dual-boot option standard they would sell a lot more tablets.  I for one would buy it over any locked-down tablet any day.  Give me freedom to use it as I please when I need to and make it smooth and simple to use it in the Barnes & Noble environment when I want to.  Simple enough, but the people in Marketing obviously don’t think so.  This situation will bear watching in the near future.  I would have chalked Barnes & Noble up as doomed just a short time ago, but then Microsoft infused them with three hundred million dollars.  Why would one of the most successful companies on earth invest a third of a billion dollars in a failing company?  Obviously they plan on using their tablet business as an outlet for Windows 8, but I fail to see how it will help in this incredibly restrictive environment.  

All eyes on Barnes & Noble and Microsoft, I for one can’t wait to see what’s coming.

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