Barnes & Noble Moves Nook Front And Center

Barnes & Noble plans to move its Nook electronic reader out of its cubbyhole beginning this September, placing it front and center in the bookstore chain’s most serious challenge yet to Amazon.com’s popular Kindle. Barnes & Noble plans to build Nook boutiques in its largest stores, set aside floor space near its cafes for Nook displays, which will include accessories and demonstrations. The bookstore chair will make room for the Nooks by devoting less space to CDs, PCWorld reports. The latest Nook models cost around $199 ($149 for a Nook with Wi-Fi but no 3G). In contrast, Amazon.com is offering new Kindles at $189 and $139. The latest generation Kindles will ship Aug. 27, but customers can pre-order on Amazon.com, which is currently devoting its home page to promoting the new Kindles. To stay competitive, Barnes & Noble is not only offering e-reader hardware such as the Nook, but also offering e-reader software for iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, PC and MAC. As electronic publishing takes off and e-readers become more common, which device do you think will ultimately dominate the market? Will Amazon’s Kindle stay on top? Or does Nook or some other device stand a chance? With the prevalence of mobile smartphones, do you think at the end of the day market domination might be more about which e-reader software is the best, rather than a specific device? Leave your comments below.