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Apple Considering Barnes & Noble Acquisition?

In any case, this might make sense if Apple sees Amazon as a potential (serious) direct competitor. Amazon is known to be planning on growing the Kindle line to include full-fledged tablets. B&N could give them the downmarket eReader, content, and delivery to go up against Amazon. I doubt :apple: would maintain the Nook as is, but they could re-implement it as an iProduct.

I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but I could definitely see it as an Apple strategic move. $1B is chump change for :apple:. I doubt Apple really wants the bricks and mortar, but I could see them picking up an eBook business. I could see some vague uses for the bricks and mortar for, say siting hard delivery of e-content, micro Apple stores, or some other tertiary purposes, although thaose would be pure gravy.
 
inkswamp said:
Ooh, so serious. ;)

I've been following MR for ages, and some of the best threads/stories over the years have turned out to be the fakes and the rumors that don't come true. Just watching everyone here attack the fakes is worth the price of admission alone. If you want hard news, go elsewhere. Here, it's unsubstantiated rumors and fakes galore... and an occasional real tidbit. Try to have some fun with it.
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I've been following it for a long time too. I'm not talking about 1 story here and 1 story there. I'm saying I've noticed a significant difference in both article quality (unrelated to this article) and more importantly, number of completely off-the-wall things that show up as "Front Page"
 
Funny

Apple is being rumored to buy a bunch of tired old assets, like a bookstore chain. They have stores. They sell Apple hardware and make the software available.

Barnes & Noble, and all the big chains of the '80s, are near bankruptcy. Love those dinosaurs. Blockbuster? Great stuff. I love going to Blockbuster. Maybe Apple should throw its money away on that, too.

Pretty soon, we'll go back to e-books from cyberspace, and local bookstores for the local literati. Collectors of paper books.

Not a growing business except the e-book side.
 
FrankieTDouglas said:
Please, no! If Apple bought Adobe, they would just **** up their software like what Apple does with every other professional software they try to "update."
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If Apple bought Adobe, it would kill off Adobe's product line. That would be the only reason to buy Adobe.
 
The cost would be minimal. It offers many, many excellent locations and built-in traffic patterns. It includes a franchise to sell books and textbooks which would allow Apple to "manage" the transition from physical books to virtual books, as and when possible, from a position of strength and widespread penetration.

I can see why they would be interested. It would lower their margins, albiet on a very small scale of revenue.

The market cap is only $1.02B as of today.

Key stats and ratios Q2 (Apr '11) 2011
Net profit margin -4.33% -1.06%
Operating margin -5.86% -0.93%
EBITD margin - 2.33%
Return on average assets -6.28% -2.03%
Return on average equity -28.14% -8.59%
Employees 30,000

2010 annual report: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/documents/bn_annual_report_2010.pdf

How big is the smallest Apple store? Put 0.5-1 of those in each location?

Be brutal in location reduction according to results. They should buy it through a subsidiary or separate firm, immediately file BK since it is insolvent, and tell all landlords they are now on month to month (year to year), or they can ask them to leave, then within 2 years they would know which leases to renew.

Every landlord drools over the prospect of Apple leasing because they believe in longer term leases, and generate massive traffic of benefit to all other tenants.

Rocketman
 
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I see a lot of ignorant views on why it won't happen, how about some reasons that it might?

The first thing to mind is "land grab." Apple no longer needs mall foot traffic to sell devices, the hype machine is running on all cylinders, maybe they've outgrown the mall environment and want to break ground on stand-alone b&m locations?

It makes financial sense - owning vs renting.

Apple is currently doing the same thing with it's offices - consolidating into one massive hq (owning vs renting).

As a bonus, they kill off the nook, which I wouldn't exactly consider a competitor, but it's another tablet option - they may get access to some titles that they can move into iBooks, but the big bonus is that this would kill off the last remaining large scale bookstore and push consumers towards digital distribution.

The more I think about it, the better it sounds... I'm going to pick up some bn stock, just in case.
 
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FrankieTDouglas said:
Please, no! If Apple bought Adobe, they would just **** up their software like what Apple does with every other professional software they try to "update."
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Another bitter final cut user. There are other "professional" applications out there, go buy one of them. It is more profitable to market software to the majority, not the minority (you).
 
I am a Barnes & Noble employee. About 80% of store locations are leased, NOT owned by Barnes & Noble.

I, personally, can't see the benefit for Apple.




The information, views, and opinions expressed in this post are my own personal opinions and not that of Barnes & Noble.

^^^To keep my job.
 
Trudy said:
Apple buys B&N

B&N bookstore, entire available e-book stock, integrated into iTunes for iDevice availability

Next version of Nook is more of a scaled-down, cheaper iPad, the iPad Reader.

Apple instantly has an even bigger inroad into academic purchases.

More kids grow up on Apple products in a serious context, school.
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Those are actually good ideas.
 
Agree on the face of it seems like a silly rumor.

But we don't know totality or extent of licenses BN may hold which may be valuable to Apple and less expensive to obtain by buying the chain vs doing it's own deals. Of course Apple might also want to buy BN to shut them down -- like the apparently did w/ LaLa. But that would kill their good mojo so I doubt they'd try to kill off the last U.S. B&M bookseller.

As for why not Borders -- could be Borders didn't have the licenses or the extent of them. Could be Apple wants BN's locations and Borders were usually subpar.

Also B&N isn't in great financial shape either so they could probably be bought for cheap too.
 
What would Apple gain?

If Apple plans on a quick expansion of brick and mortar stores that not only sell computers...

If it seeks many stores in good locations (it would take a while to rent all these, establish leases)....

...and then rebrand it as the Apple bookstore...

Other than that, I'd be puzzled.

While Barnes & Noble has a better name than the deceased Borders, it is still a much weaker brand than Apple.

So just buying it and keeping it running under its name: what's the point?

Or are the Barnes&Noble book members such an important database for Apple to get as well? Are those people a group that his widely resisted the Apple pull, and Apple would get quick access to a great number of new customers?
 
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