Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the heating up market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined. It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its educationally-focussed College business that will see Microsoft make a $ 300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $ 1.7 billion in exchange for around 17.6 percent equity in the subsidiary.
The news leaves the door open for B&N to eventually spin these off into a separate business altogether — or sell them to Microsoft. And it leaves a big load of questions about what B&N will do next with the Nook, which is build on a forked version of Google’s Android platform.
TechCrunch
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