I've got an original Nook that I like, the eInk is great for readability, I was initially hesitant as to what to think about the Nook Color since it loses the readability advantage over traditional tablets. So now that B&N is opening up the Nook Color with an SDK I'm a little more excited about it. But what I'm really curious about is, does B&N make a profit off the hardware sales or is it a loss leader for ebook sales (is it the razor or the blade)? If B&N makes money on the hardware it will have a nice new revenue stream as ebooks gradually supplant traditional print books, but if they take a loss on each unit hoping to recoup via ebook sales the platform may not have a long lifespan if they discontinue it due to everybody rooting the thing for a cheap Honeycomb tablet with no more vendor lock in.
I don't think they're taking a loss on it. They could easily have put up a few speedbumps to hacking it if they cared, like not unconditionally booting off the SD card.
I just signed up and looked around the site. But I don't quite understand the platform. Is the Nook an eReader that happens to also be an android tablet? What does the Nook SDK provide? I didn't see any docs on the site.
Yes, the Nook Color is essentially an android tablet. Along with eBooks, book store, and web browsing, it has an "Extras" area which currently features a limited selection of apps (Pandora, photo gallery, crossword, chess, sudoku, mp3 player). Barnes and Noble will be launching a moderated version of the Android App store (along with Flash capabilities) in an update sometime this month.
So, their color Nook gets an SDK after a few months. And their Eink ones still have nothing. Why no love, B&N?
The Kindle SDK is still in limited Beta. It's weird how slowly Amazon moves in some areas. Glacial pacing.
I'd guess it's because it's a completely different architecture, eInk is such a niche use that the engineering resources needed to provide an SDK probably outweighs the development community that would make use of it. The Nook Color on the other hand has a huge development base and the SDK heavy lifting has been done already via the underlying Android platform.