Barnes & Nobles Launches 'Nook App' for Windows » Google Play News

Barnes & Nobles Launches ‘Nook App’ for Windows

Barnes & Noble, a leading retailer of books in the United States has a chain of book stores dotting across the country. The company is headquartered in New York City. The company owns several large retail outlets and has a tradition of serving coffee at their cafes that are part of the retail outlets. Apart from books they do sell DVDs, magazines, games, newspapers, a wide range of gifts and almost every genre of music. The company also owned Game Stop which specialized in video games. This division was hived off into an independent company.

They are also well known for their Barnes & Noble Nook, which is their own brand of e-reader, which is based on an Android platform. It was first released in 2009 and included WiFi and 3G wireless connectivity from AT&T, an E-Ink display and a tiny touchscreen meant to serve as the main input device. Later, in 2010, a WiFi only model was released yielding to popular demand. Not content with this, they then followed it up with a color Liquid Crystal Display that was appropriately christened Nook Color. Close on the heels of Nook Color came the second-generation E Ink device that was sold under the name Nook Simple Touch.

Barnes & Noble did not want to be left out of the tablet race and came out with their 8 Gigabyte and 16 Gigabyte versions of Nook Tablet that could be operated only through WiFi. Not long after, they got the brilliant inspiration to tie-up with Microsoft and ultimately spin off the College and Nook related businesses into a separate subsidiary. Not content with that, they wanted to test the waters across the shores and entered into strategic partnerships with major stores in the United Kingdom. These retailers started offering the digital products of Nook to the avid readers and entertainment loving public. They propose to target millions of users in the United Kingdom over a period of time.

Today, Barnes & Noble have launched a Nook app that goes along with Windows 8 computers and tablets that have become a rage ever since they were launched. This free offering that comes from the strategic collaborators offers a collection of more than 3 million books, comic books, magazines and newspapers, and exclusive digital comics from the popular DC comics. This is the very first offering from the joint effort of Microsoft and Barnes & Noble that will go under the banner Nook Media LLc. Microsoft on their part have invested heavily – over $300 million hoping to cash in on their Windows 8 platform and the recently launched Surface tablet.

Barnes & Noble have put to good use the signature live tiles of Windows 8 which is in addition to the interface that reminds one so much of natural paper. Live tiles act like efficient bookmarks that let you get back to where you left off by displaying real-time updates right at the start screen itself. The interface is geared to alert you of new arrivals besides keeping you posted about the arrival of pre-ordered books. The collaboration of Microsoft and Barnes & Noble is really great news for the reading community.

This is a guest post by Samantha Kirk of mytechhep.com, a site that offers savings and current information on Toshiba Support.