While the holiday has traditionally been a good season for e-readers, Barnes & Noble’s Nook didn’t quite feel the Christmas cheer. In fact, quite the opposite.
Revenues from B&N’s Nook segment were $125 million for the holiday period, down 60.5 percent from the same time last year, the company reported today. Device and accessories sales dropped 66.7 percent year over year to $88.7 million, while digital content sales dropped 27.3 percent to $36.5 million.
“Sales in the NOOK segment declined year-over-year largely because during the previous holiday season the company introduced two new tablet products, while no new tablets were introduced this year,” Barnes and Noble CEO Michael Huseby said in a press release. “Instead, we executed our plan to sell through our existing high-quality devices.”
That’s bad news, especially considering that Amazon had a gangbusters holiday, complete with the launch of the Kindle Fire HDX, which garnered positive reviews.
The news comes after the bookseller finally announced the appointment of Huseby, who was its CFO, as its new CEO. William Lynch, the company’s previous CEO, suddenly resigned in July, and the company has been operating without a replacement chief executive for the past 6 months. It seems that may have had something to do with the company’s stumble on new Nook models.
Microsoft made a $300 million investment in the Nook in 2012, but it seems that investment may not be paying off in the way that the Redmond-based tech giant would want, especially given that Barnes & Noble still hasn’t managed to release a Nook app for Windows Phone, something that was a part of the two companies’ original agreement.
