Engadget - There's no denying that Barnes & Noble's Nook business has faced challenges lately. The bookseller may, however, have an extra trick up its sleeve to keep e-reader buyers coming back. Taking a page from the likes of Apple and Amazon, it's expanding Nook Free Fridays to include apps in addition to books. The gesture effectively doubles the volume of free loot each week as long as you've got a tablet like a Nook HD or HD+.
Back in 2012, Microsoft entered into an agreement with Barnes & Noble to fund their (at the time, quite popular) e-reader/tablet, the Nook. The deal saw Microsoft invest over $300 million in exchange for a 17.6% stake in the rising digital business. However, after years of slumping Nook sales due to the rise of the Kindle and the iPad, as well as Microsoft releasing its own tablet, the Surface line, both companies have agreed to end the pact and split ways.
Maximum PC: Barnes & Noble is pushing hard to make its Nook HD (7 inches) and Nook HD+ (8.9 inches) tablets the go-to gift item for Father's Day by rolling out its deepest discounts to date. That's saying something, considering you could have saved anywhere from $50 to $90 on a Nook HD/HD+ for Mother's Day. This time around the discounts run as deep as $120, provided you make a purchase between now and June 16, 2013.
Maximum PC: With so many low-cost tablets entering the fray, Barnes & Noble wants to make sure it's Nook HD and Nook HD+ don't get overlooked. To help put them both in the spotlight, B&N last week issued a firmware update that added Google Play access to the tablets, making it much more difficult to pigeonhole them as glorified eBook readers. And if that wasn't enough incentive, B&N just dropped the price by about 30 percent for Mother's Day.
