14 DAY TRIAL // Barnes & Noble Nook line was supposed to be the company’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle, in both eReader and tablet department, but the devices couldn't manage to capture the attention of customers.
In the September quarter, B&N announced its revenue in the Nook department went down 32.2% year-over-year. Due to the negative results, the book company is apparently looking at make some drastic changes in the Nook department.
According to a tip, B&N laid off its entire Nook hardware engineering team, following last month’s dismissal of its VP of Hardware, Bill Saperstein. Pocket-lint has talked to official company representatives, which have said the rumors aren't exactly true because they haven’t eliminated the entire hardware Nook team.
For those of you who were afraid B&N might discontinue the Nook line altogether, have no fear, the company will keep producing the “awarding-wining” Nook products.
“We've been very clear about our focus on rationalizing the Nook business and positioning it for the future success and value creation.”
“As we've aligned Nook’s cost structure with business realities, staffing levels in certain areas of our organization have changed, leading to some job eliminations. We’re not going to comment specifically on those elimination.”
The Nook line has struggled to remain afloat and B&N continues to offer the devices with very attractive prices. Yet, it appears they seem to be missing something concerning customers’ preferences.
“We believe we have a strong management team in place at Nook, having recruited significant new talent.”
“The new Nook management team is focused on managing the business efficiently so that it becomes financially strong while at the same time aggressively moving to drive revenue growth.”
A couple of new Nook models might bring the spot light back on the company, but with Google rumored to be working on an innovative eReader device of sorts, competition is going to get harder and harder.