BrightHand broke the news that Nook preorders are now shipping on December 11th (Nov 30th was the original shipping date).
those placing pre-orders now are being told that they won’t get it until the second week in December.
Wall Street Journal have their own take on it -
A second wave of customers was told it would ship Dec. 7. Now new customers are being told that their pre-orders will ship Dec. 11
Buying a Nook sight unseen for Christmas?
The way things are trending it seems that soon people will have to buy a Nook without touching it or playing with it if they want one for Christmas -
Those who would like to give the Nook as a Christmas present will apparently have to seriously consider buying it unseen, as devices pre-ordered next month might not ship until too late.
Also, it seems like stores will only have demo units (this might be a bit of an exaggeration by BrightHand) -
At this point, it’s not clear if B&N stores will have more than demo units this year; all sales may have to happen on the Web.
Growing Pains? Smart selling?
There are a few possibilities -
- The Nook is a bigger hit than thought. Possible.
- Barnes & Noble simply underestimated the eReader market thanks to Amazon’s secrecy. This is the most probable reason.
- B&N want to push sales and are trying to replicate what happened with Kindle 1 and the ensuing rush to buy Kindles before they sold out. Nintendo Wii and Apple products have used the strategy before (knowingly or unknowingly).
- B&N want to sell as many Nooks as possible before the lawsuit when an injunction might halt sales. This is the second most probable reason.
The news arriving so soon after Alex’s request for an injunction certainly points to it as a reason. If B&N were simply trying to pump sales they’d wait until Thanksgiving.
Why does the BN site not say any of this?
As of 6:18 pm PST the Barnes & Noble site did not give any warning of the delays. Perhaps it only shows up after you order – which defeats the purpose.
Has Amazon managed to fool B&N into underestimating the market for eReaders?
This is the most probable reason that B&N are out of stock.
They simply had no idea of what the demand would be (and certainly no idea of how big Christmas Season could be).
They probably came in expecting 100,000 to 200,000 sales and then found out that a few million eReaders are going to sell this holiday season and Nook’s share (25-30%?) amounts to a lot more than 100,000 Nooks.
The two extremes i.e.
- Stealing Amazon’s strategy of ‘sold-out’ to create demand.
- Getting fooled by Amazon’s secrecy.
Point to just how clueless we are about the actual eReader market.
You have to give Amazon credit - even after 2 years no one has any credible idea of actual Kindle sales figures.
Filed under: Barnes Noble Nook | Tagged: nook roadblock, nook strategy
Amazon is used to coping with a high number of visitors (they run cloud operations for third parties) and yet in the couple of days after the K International shipped, it was almost impossible at times to log into your account to track the shipment. Much of that will be down to people hitting refresh to get a minute-to-minute update, but I think we might be suprised if and when the true numbers are ever revealed.
As a B&N bookseller, I can verify the Wall Street Journal’s take on it. We were told to start telling customers the 7th and then the 11th for preorder ship dates. They are still hoping to have units to sell in-store, but only “A” and “B” stores get them (sorted by sales volume). “C” stores will only have a (one) display.
Possibility #4. The manufacturing yields are less than expected and the ODM is unable to ramp supply. All you can say, in the absence of real data, is that demand exceeds supply. Why preclude the possibility that the supply of a brand new, never released product is less than expected? It wouldn’t be the first time that this has happened to a new high tech product.
I think it’s the market unseen. I read early in 2009 that this would be the ebook reader year. And it is. But around Christmas.
And 2010? Will be even BIGGER.