The Extent Of B&N’s Weakness In The Tablet Space

Published by

Eoin Purcell

January 31, 2013

Pretty much everyone knows that Barnes & Noble had a bad holiday season in terms of selling tablets, even the company acknowledged it.

I was inclined to let it lie, I did wonder why B&N had under-performed, after all the company seemed to have perfectly fine tablet devices on offer, but perhaps it was just one of those quirks that sometimes happens. But then I saw the IDC figures for tablet shipments in quarter four, 2012 and, even if we take those figures as close to accurate, the news is really quite bad news for B&N:

“Worldwide tablet shipments outpaced predictions reaching a record total of 52.5 million units worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012 (4Q12), according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. The tablet market grew 75.3% year over year in 4Q12 (up from 29.9 million units in 4Q11) and increased 74.3% from the previous quarter’s total of 30.1 million units. Lower average selling prices (ASPs), a wide range of new product offerings, and increased holiday spending all acted as catalysts to push the already climbing tablet market to record levels.“

via Tablet Shipments Soar to Record Levels During Strong Holiday Quarter, According to IDC – prUS23926713.

B&N went from shipping 1.4 million tablets in 2011, to shipping only 1 million in 2012 (an almost 28% drop in units shipped). That would be bad enough in a stable or falling market, but the market GREW by some 75% over the same period.

B&N was crushed by its closest competitor, ASUS who went from shipping 0.6 million units to shipping 3.1 million units! Or from less less than half of what B&N sold to shipping three times more.

Amazon moved decisively away from B&N, shipping six times as many units. Samsung, who only sold 600,000 more tablets than B&N in 2011, shipped 6.9 million more tablets than B&N in 2012.

Even Microsoft, whose tablets were new entries to the market (and who have partnered with B&N in the Nook/Newco venture) is said to have shipped 900,000 units.

The only sensible analysis of these figures is that B&N is losing ground and facing vibrant, effective and tough competitors. Unless the deal with Microsoft yields fruit soon and enables the Nook/Newco venture to grow shipments and sales aggressively, we have seen the peak of the Nook tablet business.

Story title edited from Failure to Weakness. I felt using failure was unfairly harsh on the company, given the success they had in selling 1 million units, no mean feat for a bookseller!

5 responses to “The Extent Of B&N’s Weakness In The Tablet Space”

Barnes & Noble Worries Spread | Digital Book World

February 1, 2013

[…] Barnes & Noble’s Massive Tablet Failure (Eoin Purcell) While all of its competitors – from Amazon to ASUS to Samsung – greatly increased the numbers of tablets they sold in 2012, a banner year for the device category, B&N sold fewer than it did in 2011. Barnes & Noble Overly Optimistic About Its Dark Future? (The Shatzkin Files) Book publishing consultant (and DBW partner) Mike Shatzkin wonders if B&N’s own assessment of closing nearly a third of its locations in the next decade is overly optimistic. Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing (HuffPo) The pros and cons of both listed out. A bit oversimplified, too. (More on self-publishing vs. traditional publishing vs. hybrid publishing here.) Top Ten Mistakes Writers Make When Self-Publishing (DBW) Ten books with traditional publishers and two on his own and Guy Kawasaki has seen it all. He offers this helpful primer on what not to do. (Boiling it down, put time, effort and thought into every stage of the publishing process, like full-service publishers do.) The Next Ebook Wave (Forbes) Publishing company CEOs should sit down before reading this: Things are about to get a whole lot more digital in the book world. Small Publisher Power (IBPA) Over the past four years, the publishing industry in the U.S. has grown. Smaller publishers, as a group, have far outstripped the growth of the industry as a whole. Pearson, Gutenberg, Windows 8 (DBW) Pearson UK has teamed up with e-textbook production technology vendor Gutenberg Technology to create what they are calling the first e-textbooks designed for the Windows 8 platform. […]

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Thad McIlroy (@ThadMcIlroy)

February 1, 2013

B&N has a first rate online bookstore, but can’t successfully compete in the tablet space. Apple still dominates the tablet space, but has a second-rate ebookstore (both price and selection) Microsoft made a half-decent attempt (from a technology perspective) with the Surface tablet, but will remain an also-ran. Hmm….

Reply
1. Eoin Purcell
  
  February 1, 2013
  
  Thad, thanks for the comment! The funny thing is that amazon has such a great ecosphere for buying and reading that eve if their tablets were failing, they;
  ‘d probably be okay. B&N/Nook’s ecosphere isn’t as robust yet it seems to me, or at least, as visibly robust! I suspect B&N will only ever be an also ran in the tablet space and that is a problem!
  
  Reply
Is Barnes and Noble Going The Way of Borders…as in Bankrupt?

February 3, 2013

[…] Barnes & Noble’s Massive Tablet Failure […]

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Ether for Authors: What We Leave Behind | Publishing Perspectives

February 4, 2013

[…] Purcell, in The Extent of B&N’s Weakness in the Tablet Space, helps sort out just how troubling things seem to look by checking the International Data […]

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Co-founder and publisher @fullsetbooks 📚. Expect books and 🍰.

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