Instead, he said that the investment might be an effort by Pearson to help Barnes & Noble stay in competition with Amazon.
Barnes & Noble has tried to keep up with larger competitors by producing its own critically praised tablet and has claimed about 25 percent of the e-book market. But maintaining technological parity is expensive for a company that does not sell a broad range of similar merchandise. The chain has struggled under the burden of investing heavily in the Nook business over the last two years.
Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon, and receive breaking news alerts throughout the day.
Children take their tablets as seriously as they do their bikes. So if you are going to buy one that is just for them, Free insurance info you should involve them in the process.
Barnes & Noble moved to shore up its struggling Nook Media division Friday, agreeing to sell a 5 percent stake to Pearson, a British publishing and education company, for $89.5 million.
Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell, a research and consulting firm in Northern California, agreed that propping up a competitor to Amazon might be a motive, but he added that Pearson, with an investment of close to $90 million, was probably looking for more.
, Barnes & Noble Nook, Book Trade and Publishing, Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures, Microsoft Corporation, Pearson PLC
Pearsons investment in Nook is the latest in a series of recent steps the company has taken to focus on digital expansion and distribution of its education content and services. Higher education in the United States is already Pearsons largest single business and in October it acquired EmbanetCompass, a provider of online learning services to North American colleges and universities, for $650 million.
In a sign of the headwinds the bookseller is cing, the company said in a regulatory filing that holiday sales were weaker than expected and that its Nook unit would ll short of projections for 2013.
This week, the Recipes for Health columnist Martha Rose Shulman offers new recipes with some unusual grains you may not have ever cooked or eaten.
Mr. McQuivey acknowledged the potential of the education market but said it had too many variables to be seen as a reliable source of revenue.
Digital textbooks are a small, new niche market and a partner like Pearson can only help accelerate that market and that is important, but it is incremental, Mr. Wahlstrom said.
For many Greeks, new mining operations signal a disregard for the environmental costs of development.
General Electric reported a better-than-expected 7.5 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit and a sharp increase in its backlog of equipment orders.
Whether Facebooks users will continue to divulge even more private details will determine whether so-called social search is the next step in how we navigate the online world.
Still, investors seemed to be cheered by the infusion of cash and the tie-in with Pearsons large education and textbook business. That market has trailed trade books in switching to a digital format, and Barnes & Noble could benefit as education books catch up. It could also try to make the Nook tablet a preferred device for educational content.
Dr. Peter J. Ajemian pleaded guilty in federal court for his role in a widespread disability fraud involving workers at the commuter railroad.
The result was a r cry from some of Ms. Winfreys most mous interviews, as some viewers struggled to find OWN on their television.
That same month, Pearson agreed to merge its Penguin book publishing business which does popular as opposed to educationalpearsons education Pearson to Take Stake in Nook Unit books with Bertelsmanns Random House division, which further narrowed Pearsons focus on educational books.
Shares in the company were up 4.3 percent, closing at $14.97.
Peter Wahlstrom, a senior analyst with Morningstar Equity Research, called the move a net positive for Barnes & Noble.
Among the things Pearson might get for its investment, Mr. Doctor said, was preferential placement of its products on Nook home pages or even a say in how the device evolves over the next few years.
Lance Armstrong choked up as he spoke of revealing his doping to his son, but his other answers during the second part of his interview with Oprah Winfrey iled to persuade antidoping officials that he was telling all he knew.
Subscribe
Facebook unveiled a new way to search, Boeings problems with its 787 Dreamliner deepened and transcripts from the Federal Reserve offered a new look at its response to the financial crisis in 2007.
A version of this article appeared in print on 12/29/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Bookseller Sells Stake In Struggling Nook Unit.
The forecast underscores the difficulties Barnes & Noble is having as it tries to build out its digital business and compete in a crowded market with giant companies like Amazon, Apple and Google. Sales for the first generation of e-readers have been dropping rapidly as consumers shift to tablets that can offer other forms of media like music,Insurance News. games and video. Just this week, Amazon was trumpeting banner sales of its Kindle Fire tablet over the holidays.
Dell said its third-quarter profit was hurt by lower PC sales and weaker demand from large corporations.
Some analysts questioned whether Pearson was getting its moneys worth. In addition to its initial 5 percent stake in the Nook business, it has an option to buy another 5 percent. Pearsons investment values the Nook business at $1.8 billion, more than double Barnes & Nobles market value on Friday of $883 million.
In a bid to clean up one of the nations dirtiest coal-fired power plants without causing economic harm to the Navajo Nation, which surrounds it, the Environmental Protection Agency is giving the plants owners five extra years.
By contrast, worldwide shipments of e-readers fell by 36 percent in 2012, according to a report released this month by IHS iSuppli, a market research firm.
As a result, the company has sought partners for its Nook business for financial support. Last spring,info on insurance. Barnes & Noble spun off the Nook division as a separate company and sold a 16.8 percent stake to Microsoft for $300 million. In theory, Microsoft will help promote the Nook through its Windows software, although a significant push has not yet emerged.
In the long run, if you can make the educational market explode and you get schools to give to tens of millions of children Nooks and put Pearson education content into the Nook, then it would be a long-range strategy for customers, he said.
The markets growth is slowing down, said James L. McQuivey, a media analyst with Forrester Research, referring to e-readers. The easy customers have been snatched up. And the first customers are the best customers, who buy the most books. In the case of Amazon, you can compensate by selling merchandise to later adopters. Barnes & Noble doesnt have that luxury.
Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn says the company follows the next play philosophy of Duke University basketball that the team shouldnt dwell on celebrating recent successes or lamenting ilures.
In a written statement, Will Ethridge, chief executive of Pearson North America, emphasized the advantages of the investment for the learning community. The deal, he said, will allow our two companies to work closely together in order to create a more seamless and effective experience for students. He added, It is another example of our strategy of our content and services broadly available to students and culty through a wide range of distribution partners.
While the financial firm can find ways to cut costs, its core operations ce significant challenges, from both internal and external forces.
People in the cycling and antidoping communities said they were mostly unmoved by Lance Armstrongs interview with Oprah Winfrey.
That is why I think it is about preference and maybe really taking the Nook into an education leadership position, he said.
