If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Hot on the heels of the launch of fellow bookseller Amazon’s own Android Appstore, Barnes & Noble has today gone official with what has been rumoured for some time – an App Store for their tablet / eBook reader, the Nook Color.
Although earlier rumours had suggested that Barnes & Noble were preparing to launch a vanilla Android port on their popular 7″ slate, these were dashed when the Nook Color showed up on the Home Shopping Network boasting a slew of soon-to-be-released features, including Flash support and the Nook App Store.
Unless Barnes & Noble can think up a catchier name they may be in hot water with Apple – the boys from Cupertino sued Amazon over their alleged infringement of Apple’s “App Store” trademark – a trademark that has been contested for some time.
Like Amazon, Barnes & Noble will be vetting apps before approval, and have issued guidelines to that effect –
“[The] app review process will follow the company’s content acceptance policies as with books to ensure the content is appropriate for the Barnes & Noble customer.”
We’re sure money-spinners like Angry Birds will be winging their way to the best-selling tablet, however whether Barnes & Noble can best Amazon’s 3,800 apps at launch remains to be seen.
So why is a bricks-and-mortar bookseller getting into the App business? The answer is almost certainly apps themselves. If Barnes & Noble had released an unmodified Android version for the Nook, buyers would have access to the Market and all hundreds of thousands of apps within – including eBook apps from the Nook’s competitors such as Amazon, Kobo and Sony. By creating their own proprietary store, they can keep the competition out and hopefully tie Nook Color owners into their own ecosystem.
A developer portal has been launched, so if all you excitable Android developers want to tailor your app for yet another devices and another app store, what are you waiting for?
