Barnes & Noble Inc unveiled its electronic reader in a challenge to Amazon.com Inc's Kindle, featuring a color screen and the same $259 price, ahead of the key holiday shopping season.
The device will use AT&T for wireless and Google Inc's Android mobile platform. Barnes & Noble said it would allow its users to share books, a function that the Kindle currently does not allow.
The Nook will be available at Barnes & Noble's nearly 800 U.S. stores in November. Shoppers could pre-order the device from the bookseller's site on Tuesday, with delivery slated for late November.
The nascent electronic reader market — arguably built by the Kindle — has turned into a key battleground for the consumer electronics industry this holiday season.
Some 3 million e-readers are expected to be sold in the United States this year, with doubled sales in 2010, according to Forrester Research.
Retailers, electronics manufacturers, publishers and wireless operators are all hoping to gain a toehold in what is expected to be the digital transition of book sales, not unlike music and newspapers before them.
Barnes & Noble's use of a dual display using color is unique. That smaller display, positioned below the main display used for reading, allows users to browse the company's bookstore and click on titles.
Users can also make notes and highlight text. The Nook can hold the same amount of books — 1500 — as the Kindle.
Barnes & Noble said that most of its titles can be lent for up to two weeks to friends, a function that should be attractive to users who do not want to be limited by a proprietary system like Amazon's.
SUPPORTS EPUB FORMAT
The Kindle, which has taken a page from Apple Inc's dominance in the digital music industry, operates on a closed system in which books ordered on Amazon can only be read on the Kindle, or on the iPhone or iPod Touch.
Barnes & Noble said it was supporting the ePub format, a publishing standard allowing users to read content on multiple devices, as well as an antipiracy protection from Adobe Systems Inc.
Sony, which already features touchscreen, is moving to both of these standards by year's end.
The debut of the e-reader follows Barnes & Noble's launch of an online digital bookstore that it touted as the world's largest, with over 700,000 titles that could be read on devices like Apple Inc's iPhone. It said then it would be the exclusive provider of digital content on the Plastic Logic e-reader, due in early 2010.
Analysts say Barnes & Noble's advantage could be in its nearly 800 physical stores across the United States where users will be able to test out the device.
Also important is the company's existing relationship with publishers, although Amazon, too, shares that advantage — one that analysts say Sony, for example, does not enjoy.
While Sony Corp's Sony Reader currently holds the estimated No 2 position to the Kindle, other devices include Interead's "Cool-er" and the Cybook OPUS from Bookeen.
Others expected to hit the market soon include devices from iRex Technologies, a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, Taiwan's Asustek, a Hearst-backed venture called FirstPaper and Plastic Logic, whose QUE reader due in January is geared to to business professionals.
E-reader hype has hit a peak in the past month, as Amazon rolled out the Kindle internationally, Google Inc unveiled plans for an online e-book store, and News Corp's Rupert Murdoch visited Asia to suss out e-reader technology.
