14 DAY TRIAL // Barnes and Noble is serious about its position on the tablet and e-reader markets and isn't about to let any legal struggle stop it from ordering millions of them to be made.
According to Digitimes, the producer of two of the most disruptive products on the tablet and e-reader market placed a total of 1.5 million orders in the fourth quarter of 2011.
As people no doubt know by now, Barnes and Noble has caused quite a stir on both the e-reader and tablet markets.
This is because the Nook Tablet sells for $249 (180 EUR) and the Nook Color e-reader is not actually an e-reader at all.
Certainly, B&N restricted some of the uses of the Nook Color but, in the end, even if it is marketed as an e-reader it is still more of a tablet, with its media support and Android operating system.
The Nook tablet measures 7 inches, while the Nook color measures just as much, hence the difficulty in telling them apart.
Even their frames are the same, with a hollow lower left corner, for attaching a chain or lace or cord of any other sort.
Of the aforementioned 1.5 million product orders, 1.1 million are for Nook Tablets, while the remaining 400,000 are for Nook Color readers.
The information comes from so-called sources from the supply chain and fits with a previous report about 1 million tablets having already been made.
Now we just have to wait and see if the bookstore chain ends up in any hot water because of its quarrel with Microsoft.
Some may have missed it, but Microsoft has been trying to really throw wrenches in the works of B&N's product roadmap.
It went so far as to demand veto power over whatever devices B&N might seek to make in the future, plus licensing fees for some patents.