Nathan Campos

The inspiration to write this article came after I read the The New York Times article The Bookstore's Last Stand, which discuss the current position of Barnes & Noble and how they are trying to compete with the giant Amazon.

I really have a love for 7" tablets and as I was planing my wish list to buy when I travel to the US I thought about looking at Barnes & Noble web site to learn more about their Nook Tablet so I could decide if I should get one. Of course I looked at it just because of the price and the design, for some reason I love virtual buttons on a tablet, which is very different than my actual Galaxy Tab 7" that is just a bigger Galaxy S.

After I read some reviews I added it to my wish list. I'm going to have no problem on buying it since I'm going to travel and I'll buy directly from a store, but if I wasn't it would be impossible to get one from outside the US. The thing is that B&N site has restrictions and one of those is that you can't buy anything if you're not a US citizen with a US address and credit card. This means that after I get my hands on the tablet I will not be able to buy books, videos, apps, whatever. This doesn't botter me since I was going to root and install CyanogenMod 7 on it anyway, but for a normal customer this is very bad.

If I was a normal brazilian going to the US to have a great time and decided to buy a Nook Tablet there because I was randomly walking by the road and saw an ad at the front of the B&N store, I would be screwed as soon as I get back to Brazil or the moment I try to download an app. This is why I think Barnes & Noble will fail to compete with Amazon, because if it was a Kindle Fire I would at least have the ability to download books without any problems.

The Amazon Kindle is starting to get some attention here in Brazil and I see a lot of people getting them. It's time for Barnes & Noble to rethink their strategy and label as urgent their plans to go worldwide.

This article was imported from my old blog . Some things may be broken.