“Nook Glowlight Finally Arrives in the UK Amid Kindle Competition”
I really didn’t want to believe it anymore, but today the US bookseller Barnes & Noble finally brought the Nook Glowlight to Europe. Although we’ll still have to wait for its launch in Germany, the eBook reader is now available in the UK. Barnes & Noble has been there for some time with mixed success.
The Nook Glowlight was first introduced in October 2013 and launched in the US as a competitor to the Kindle Paperwhite. There were hardly any other competitors even back then. The problem was that the Nook Glowlight was barely improved compared to its predecessor and, in some ways (e.g., no memory card expansion, no page-turn buttons), even made worse. The success of the then-new eBook reader was accordingly modest, leading to even greater losses for the Nook division.
So, it didn’t come as a complete surprise that the US bookseller initially skipped a European launch. But as we know, things move a bit slower at Barnes & Noble, and now the Nook Glowlight has finally made it to the UK.
Cheaper than the Kindle Paperwhite, but good enough?
Priced at 89 pounds or roughly 112 euros, the Americans are launching the eBook reader into the British market. However, whether this venture will be crowned with runaway success is doubtful, as the situation isn’t much different from that in their home country. Amazon controls the majority of the eBook market in the UK as well, and of course, the technically superior Kindle Paperwhite is available there. Although it costs 109 pounds or roughly 137 euros, Amazon is known for being quick to match prices with the competition.
Whether the device launch is a sign that Barnes & Noble plans to expand into the rest of Europe remains uncertain. The bookseller actually aimed to expand into 10 international markets by June 2013 at the latest. However, those plans were delayed by about a year, so everything was supposed to be launched by the end of fiscal year 2014 (which for Barnes & Noble ended in June 2014). Yet, this deadline also passed without a large-scale European launch, except for the modest Windows app launch and the introduction of the German self-publishing platform.
As we can see with the delayed Nook Glowlight launch, we shouldn’t write off the US bookseller just yet. However, the potential further delay, especially due to the significant shift in market dynamics because of the Tolino launch, increasingly diminishes Barnes & Noble’s chances in the German market. While forecasts weren’t promising a year ago, they’re now considerably worse.
