WORLD
Microsoft invests in Barnes and Noble's Nook e-books
Baku, May 2 (AZERTAC). Microsoft has invested $300m (£185m) in a digital venture with US bookseller Barnes and Noble. The deal could make Barnes and Noble's Nook e-book reader available to millions of new customers, integrating it with the Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system. The as-yet unnamed new company will be 82.4% owned by Barnes and Noble, with Microsoft getting a 17.6% stake. It will house the bookseller's digital and college education book businesses. But some industry commentators believe publishers will be "terrified" at the implications of the deal. "This deal with Microsoft could be the saviour of its digital division but won't help the bricks and mortar business," Tim Coates, managing director of Bilbary, an e-book content provider, told the BBC.
Barnes and Noble did announce at the beginning of the year that it was looking at splitting off its digital business. It said it does not yet know whether it will float the new company. Microsoft sued Barnes and Noble in March last year, alleging the Nook, which runs on the Google Android operating system, infringed its patents. The deal would seem to indicate an end to hostilities.
Sales of e-books, with their low production and distribution costs, have now oustripped sales of print titles in many cases.
According to Juniper Research, sales of handheld e-readers have leapt from below 5 million in 2009 to nearly 25 million in 2011.
The Nook's content will now be available to the growing number of people with mobile devices running Microsoft software.
"Microsoft's investment in Newco [the temporary name for the new digital and college unit], and our exciting collaboration to bring world-class digital reading technologies and content to the Windows platform and its hundreds of millions of users, will allow us to significantly expand the business," said William Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble.