The Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader line is not over yet. The company confirmed for The Verge that, despite running out of stock, it still plans to sell its Kindle competitors as soon as new units arrive in stores later this spring. In fact, there is a previously unannounced tablet that the company will soon reveal.
Susan McCulloch, senior director of Barnes & Noble for Nook operations, said The Verge that the company will bring back its line of Nook tablets with “a new NOOK tablet designed with Lenovo” that will be unveiled next week. Barnes & Noble’s latest Nook tablet was the $ 129 10.1-inch Nook, its largest Android tablet of all time. But it, along with all other Android tablets from Barnes & Noble, has not been available for purchase since last July.
Currently, electronic readers Nook GlowLight 3 and GlowLight Plus share a similar fate, as both are listed as fully sold out online. Apparently, it is the first time that the two products are unavailable at the same time, according to Good e-Reader. Some stores even list the stock available at the store, which has led to speculation that Barnes & Noble may be completely discontinuing the Nook line – something we’ve seen happen before with products like Apple’s HomePod.
But the lack of inventory is actually due to the “exceptionally strong” sales of the two products, which McCulloch credits to an increase in reading last year. “When it comes to problems, of course, this is a bittersweet problem for a retailer,” she added.
That would be impressive, given that the Nook GlowLight 3 and GlowLight Plus are a little out of date. (GlowLight 3 was launched in 2017, while the largest GlowLight Plus is almost two years old.) But it seems that the diminishing offer is due only to increased demand, unlike Barnes & Noble’s updated model planning or an exit of the e-business of the reader entirely.
Despite the odds, instead of giving up, it looks like the Nook brand is about to receive yet another update in the coming weeks. Barnes & Noble is not letting its older e-reader hardware or the incredibly supersaturated Android tablet market get in the way.