The E-book Opportunity
Barnes & Noble, by contrast, recently adopted a "Nook-centric" branding strategy. Apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices now all carry the Nook name, as will NookStudy, Barnes & Noble's new online study platform for the education market.
"We felt the Nook brand had resonated so beautifully with customers coming into the store, and we feel people understand that Nook is Barnes & Noble," says Douglas Gottlieb, vice president of digital products for Barnes & Noble.com. "We want to be completely interoperable .... [and] having one e-book brand under the Barnes & Noble umbrella kind of simplified that message for us. Nook has done so well and people are so conscious of the book device, we really wanted to leverage that halo of the Nook device and simplify it for customers."