Barnes & Noble Nook Production Ending, Licensing To Follow

The Barnes & Noble Nook is ending its production run after the company racked up recent losses from its full device range.

In the future, B&N plans to allow third-party manufacturers to produce the tablet while it focuses on designing devices and operating its digital book marketplace.

In recent financial disclosures, we learned that Nook services and devices earned $108 million for the quarter and $776 million for the full year. Those numbers marked a 34 percent decrease on the quarter and 16.8 percent on the year.

According to Barnes & Noble, the company “plans to significantly reduce losses in the Nook segment by limiting risks associated with manufacturing.”

B&N still plans to produce its Simple Touch and Glowlight devices in-house.

While the Nook HD and Nook HD+ will no longer be in production Barnes & Noble will continue to sell the tablets until current inventory is sold out. B&N believes it will run out of current inventory by the holiday season.

Customers who purchase a Nook HD or Nook HD+ will continue to receive pre-sale and post-sale support, and upgrades will be offered along with online bookstore improvements.

New devices manufactured by third-party vendors will be “co-branded” in some way. Under terms of the new deals, Barnes & Noble will assume fewer production risks while still capitalizing on its brand name recognition.

Originally, we reported that Microsoft had considered buying the Nook Media entity for $1 billion. At the time of that report, documents were leaked in which it was revealed that Barnes & Noble was investigating the possibility of leaving the tablet market.

Barnes & Noble as a company suffered a quarterly net loss of $118.6 million with a yearly loss of $154.8 million.

Do you think the Barnes & Noble Nook name can live on with the help of third-party manufacturers, or will the tablet brand fall out of favor?