Source: New Nook is Android-based, full-color
This is just a crude mock-up—and not the real deal—but our source says Nook Color is coming. — Is the upcoming Nook a color e-reader? Barnes & Noble doesn't comment on rumors, but CNET has been in communication with a source …
Context & Ripple Effects
CNET's sourcing lands mid-rumor-cycle, with Barnes & Noble declining comment, so the claim that the next [[a:none|Nook]] is a full-color Android device rests on a single unnamed source. What makes the rumor plausible rather than idle is the Android backdrop already on record by October 2010: Gartner had Android at the top of US smartphone OS share as of its August report, and Quantcast's August data put it at 25% of US mobile web browsing.
If the source is right, Barnes & Noble would be moving the Nook off its closed e-ink foundation onto the same OS winning the phone market — positioning a color reading slate directly between Amazon's grayscale Kindle strategy and Apple's iPad, rather than beside them.
First-order effects
- Barnes & Noble would be repositioning the Nook from a dedicated grayscale reader into a color Android device, putting it in competition with the iPad for couch-and-commute attention rather than just with other e-readers.
Second-order effects
- A shipping color Android Nook gives Android developers a new sub-phone screen size and price tier to target, extending an ecosystem whose marketplace was already flagged that June for loose third-party access to private data in roughly 20% of surveyed apps.
- Amazon faces pressure to answer on color and app capability for the Kindle line, since the comparison at retail shifts from e-ink page quality to what else the device can do.
Third-order effects
- If Android keeps absorbing non-phone categories the way the 2010 smartphone-share reports suggest, the durable effect is e-readers dissolving into low-cost Android slates — with book retailers' differentiation migrating from hardware to storefront software.
- Hardware makers ceding the OS layer to Google concentrate their own bets on content and retail margins, a structural trade that defines who captures value as reading goes digital.
The trend: Android is expanding from dominant smartphone platform into the default operating system for cheap consumer screens, pulling dedicated e-readers into its orbit along the way.