Zach Epstein, reporting for BGR:
Barnes & Noble on Tuesday morning reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that missed Wall Street’s consensus. Revenue was down 7.4% to $1.3 billion while the company doubled its net loss to -$118.6 million. Where Barnes & Noble’s Nook business is concerned, revenue fell 34% on-year to $108 million, resulting in a net loss of $177 million. As was seemingly just a matter of time, the struggling book seller confirmed that it is abandoning its Nook tablet hardware business and will instead rely on a ”partnership model for manufacturing in the competitive color tablet market” that will seek third-party manufacturers to build eReaders that run Nook software.
In short, B&N will no longer manufacture Nook tablet hardware, opting instead to license their software to third-parties. Given the problems for manufacturers in personal computing, coupled with even tighter margins for e-book readers, I cannot envision this being successful in the long-term.