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Contrasting eReader news from Barnes & Noble and Acer today.

Nook is B&N’s best selling product, boosts online sales 76%

Tiernan Ray at Barron’s covers the Nook specific part of B&N’s earnings call -

Calling the “Nook,” eBook reader its “single best-selling product,” Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio this morning argued the gadget is helping lure customers to its stores and boosting online traffic.

Riggio said sales of Nook, which it described as “strong,” helped boost online sales for the company by 67% in the January ending fiscal Q3.

That sounds like a lot of bonuses -

1. Nook is the single best-selling product.
2. It’s luring more customers to stores.
3. It’s getting more customers online and online sales have gone up 67% in the last quarter.

All of this despite Nook being out of stock for most of the holiday season.

B&N refused to divulge figures for Nook and eBook sales – typical eReader company .

B&N will push the Nook more

B&N’s CEO said they would expand in-store marketing for the Nook. He expects a Halo effect where the Nook increases traffic to B&N stores.

It’s conceivable that if B&N get their in-store promotions for Nook owners right it will lead to a lot more traffic in stores.

He also talked about it being more than just the device – that it was also about the content catalog, the technology, the Cloud, and the customer service. Good to see more companies begin to get it.

Acer puts Acer eReader on ice

While B&N can’t stop talking about its eReader Acer is getting cold feet about releasing its eReader.

Taipei Times has coverage of why the Acer eReader has been delayed -

 Despite having prototypes ready, the world’s second-largest PC maker Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday said it would not rush onto the e-reader bandwagon for now, as it was still studying the feasibility of a successful business model and a total product solution.

Acer is citing two reasons for the delay -

1. Size of the industry is not big enough. Which is fair enough.
2. Industry has yet to come up with a proven business model. That makes no sense to me.   

They say they have the models ready and if users embrace eReaders and Acer can figure out how to make their eReader profitable they will go ahead and release it. 

What’s the real reason Acer are putting their eReader on hold?

There are dozens of companies releasing eReaders and no one else seems to have any problems with size or profitability of eReaders.

What does Acer see that others don’t see? Does Acer have some special criteria that other companies don’t have?

There are four possibilities -

1. Acer think the iPad is going to wipe out the eReader market and want to be sure that doesn’t happen before investing in the market. 
2. Acer ran into some internal problems with their eReader or perhaps don’t think it matches up well enough. 
3. Acer really do think the market isn’t big enough and want it to be tens of millions of eReaders a year before jumping in.
4. They feel it’s too competitive a market where companies are willing to cut device prices for the promise of content revenue down the years – something Acer themselves don’t want to do.

Acer not entering the eReader market is significant – it’s the first time that a company has moved away from eReaders. It might just start a trend.

Filed under: Barnes Noble Nook Tagged: | acer ereader, nook ereader