Barnes & Noble Inc, the largest US bookstore chain, is working on a deal to sell its Nook digital devices in stores outside the US for the first time, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The chain is developing a partnership with the UK’s Waterstones Booksellers Ltd to add the Nook to its locations this year, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. Waterstones, the largest bookstore chain in the UK, has about 300 stores.
Barnes & Noble is expanding its digital business overseas to catch up to Amazon.com Inc and Rakuten Inc’s Kobo brand, which both sell devices in the UK and other countries. The Nook, released in 2009, has been driving sales growth for Barnes & Noble as people switch to digital books.
“If they do increase the distribution for the product, it’s obviously a benefit for them,” said Michael Souers, an analyst for Standard & Poor’s in New York. “Amazon is still the behemoth in the market and has the upper hand because they were the first mover in the majority of markets.”
Souers recommends selling Barnes & Noble shares.
Barnes & Noble fell 0.2 percent to US$11.95 at the close in New York, where the company is based. The shares gained 2.3 percent last year.
Revenues from the Nook unit, including e-books and devices, rose 43 percent to US$448 million in the nine weeks ended on Dec. 31, while sales in stores rose 2.5 percent to US$1.2 billion. The company said the Nook business might generate US$1.5 billion in revenues in the fiscal year ending on April 30. That would account for about 20 percent of the company’s sales based on analysts’ estimates for annual revenues of US$7.33 billion.
Waterstones, purchased by billionaire Alexander Mamut’s A&NN Capital Fund Management Ltd last year from HMV Group PLC for £53 million (US$83 million), does not make its own e- reader. The London-based chain, which posted a decline in annual sales before being sold, began selling e-books and Sony Corp’s Reader in 2008.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained