Categories: Tech & Society

Microsoft Looking to Buy Nook Media LLC for $1 Billion

TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft, which has already made an interesting $300 million investment in Nook, now wants to buy it completely. Apparently, Microsoft is offering $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nooks Media LLC.

In this plan, Microsoft would redeem preferred units in Nook Media, which also includes a college textbook division, leaving it with the digital operation — e-books, as well as Nook e-readers and tablets.

Nook e-readers, meanwhile, do not appear to fall into the discontinuation pile immediately. Rather, they’re projected to have their own gradual, natural decline — following the general trend of consumers moving to tablets as all-purpose devices.

The documents TC has seen values B&N at $1.66 billion. When Nook Media was first formed, the valuation of that division alone was $1.7 billion. When Pearson invested $85 million at a 5 percent stake in January, it was valued at $1.8 billion. If the deal goes through, Microsoft’s $1 billion purchase will be well below the price it had originally bought in at.

The internal documents show that Nook is planning to discontinue the Android-based tablet business by the end of its 2014 fiscal year and push Nook content to a ‘third party partner’.

These documents also allegedly point to Nook Media’s plans to discontinue its Android-based tablet business before the 2014 fiscal year is over, as it makes a move to a business model where Nook content will be distributed via apps on “third-party partner” devices. This leads to speculation concerning the discontinuation of the Nook, but it remains to be seen whether such third-party tablets would be Microsoft’s very own collection of Windows 8 devices and tablets made by other manufacturers.

Prateek Panda

Prateek is the Founder of TheTechPanda. He's passionate about technology startups and entrepreneurship and enjoys speaking to new founders every day. Prateek has also been consistently regarded as one of the top marketing experts in the region.

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