Barnes & Noble introduced an update to its Android-powered Nook Color and the Nook Tablet promises to deliver everything its predecessor did but ups the ante with stronger multimedia capabilities. Will this be enough to go against the Kindle Fire?
The Nook Tablet will land Nov. 17 for about $250 and while it’s about $50 more than Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the Nook Tablet may be able to justify its price with its specs. Like the Fire, it will rock a 7-inch display but the Nook Tablet has a 1 GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, 1 GB of RAM, use a customized version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, 16 GB of internal memory and a microSD slot for expanding storage up to 32 GB. The previous tablet was widely regarded as one of the most hackable Android devices out there and my time speaking with Barnes & Noble suggests that the Nook Tablet will be the same.
The 1024 x 600 display should get a good workout, as the company is already talking about the likes of Netflix, Hulu Plus and other video services eventually finding its way onto this tablet. The Nook Tablet will have its own customized app store and it will not have full access to the wider Android Market.
While I still expect the iPad to be the dominant tablet of this holiday season, the market just became much more interesting with the introduction of these lower-priced 7-inch tablet. With a $199 price tag and Amazon’s massive ecosystem behind it, the Kindle Fire is going to move a ton of units over the next few weeks. The Nook Tablet will be a bit more expensive but is arguably more powerful and the hacker crowd will probably gravitate toward the Barnes & Noble product.