Barnes & Noble’s has Amazon’s Kindle Fire squarely in its sights with its new Nook tablet.
The new 8-gigabyte tablet is priced at $199, matching the Kindle Fire in price and memory.
The Nook segment is a growing part of B&N’s business model, but the 16GB Nook Tablet introduced last fall failed to sell well after the Kindle Fire was released at a lower price point. B&N is banking the the lower price, and the ability to sell at brick and mortar locations, will spur sales.
The new Nook tablet has a 1-gigahertz dual-core processor, and a slot for an SDMicro card. Barnes & Noble’s claims you can get 11.5 hours of reading time and nine hours of video playback.
The new Nook Tablet is available online now, and will reach retailers, such as Best Buy and Walmart, in the coming weeks.