Tablet Wars Heat Up: Barnes & Noble unveils Nook Tablet

New York City -- Barnes & Noble took the wraps off its Nook Tablet, a $249 tablet for reading e-books, streaming movies and browsing the web. The new tablet, which is lighter and faster than other Nook devices, offers access to popular apps including Netflix, Hulu Plus and Pandora.



Barnes & Noble also on Monday reduced the entry-level price for its Nook line of digital readers to $99.



The new tablet device will be available in its stores on Nov. 17, two days after Amazon begins shipping pre-ordered Kindle Fires. The product was unveiled at Barnes & Noble’s store in Manhattan’s Union Square by company CEO William Lynch, who wasted no time in positioning the new Nook directly up against Amazon’s recently released Kindle Fire. He emphasized what he called the Nook’s advantages in memory and multimedia capability.



“The Kindle Fire, and they do a lot of things well, is a vending machine for Amazon services,” Lynch said. “We’re going to partner with the world’s most popular music services. We’re going to let the consumers choose.”