The Nook competes against Amazon's Kindle e-reader, as well as Apple and Google in the e-book market.
Amazon's move paves the way for it to launch its Kindle e-reader devices in the country, analysts predict.
More recently, Amazon has taken advantage of the shift to digitization by developing and launching its Kindle e-reader.
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Owners of Amazon's Kindle e-reader are constantly on the lookout for new reading material, especially if it's free.
Amazon, buoyed by the success of its Kindle e-reader, is expected to launch an Android tablet within weeks.
Amazon also updated its Kindle e-reader with a self-lighting screen and clearer resolution.
Just last week, it opened a Kindle store in Japan and started to offer the Kindle e-reader there.
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Amazon's first Kindle e-reader used a plastic non-rigid screen - known as an optical frontplane - to display its images.
Following the example Target set in May, Wal-Mart announced earlier this month that it would no longer sell the Kindle e-reader.
By contrast, Amazon's digital book business is largely focused on its Kindle e-reader and Kindle software that runs on some other hardware.
The screen technology is similar to that of a basic Kindle e-reader.
Make no mistake, Apple is not alone and others, like Amazon.com (AMZN) and its Kindle e-reader have also been contributors to this.
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As per usual the company provided no detail on the Kindle e-reader market, and did not break out the results of Amazon Web Services.
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Mallick talks about some of the apps that are coming to the BlackBerry, including Skype video calling, Kindle e-reader and the "Angry Birds" game.
As for devices, he now sees 2012 Kindle e-reader unit of 7.3 million, down from 9.7 million, with Fire units at 13.5 million, down from 14.7 million.
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Note that the subsidiary that developed the Kindle e-Reader, Lab 126, is based in Silicon Valley but Amazon did not collect sales tax in California until September 2012.
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But it hopes that its cheap tablet will be wildly popular and therefore boost sales of Amazon's cloud-based content, just as the Kindle e-reader boosted sales of e-books.
Amazon experienced an impressive 36% increase in sales over the same period last year, thanks in good part to its acquisition of Zappos and hot sales of its Kindle e-reader.
It also manufactures and sells the Kindle e-reader and strives to offer customers the lowest prices possible through low every day product pricing and free shipping offers, including through membership in Amazon Prime.
Is demand for the Amazon Kindle e-reader crumbling?
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Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartlev this morning cut his 2012 forecast for Kindle e-reader sales to 12.3 million units to 24 million, asserting that his latest checks find that Q1 Kindle component orders have fallen more than 75% from initial expectations in early January.
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Apple competes with players like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, LG Electronics (SEO:066570), Research in Motion, Samsung Electronics (SEO:005930), Toshiba (TYO:6052), and Cisco that all have or plan to launch tablets, as well as Amazon that sells the well known Kindle e-reader.
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E-readers and tablets (including Amazon's Kindle Fire e-reader, which is a modified Android tablet) were a popular holiday gift item last year.
Sony's move is also seen as a response to the widely perceived success of Amazon's Kindle e-book reader - although so far the online store has declined to reveal how many devices it has sold.
Amazon had been hoping to target the market with its 9.7-inch screen Kindle DX e-book reader, for example, but schools said the device wasn't sufficiently interactive and lacked basics such as page numbers and color graphics.
The Kindle is an e-reader, but it is also a portable bookshop.
Amazon has just unveiled a new, larger version of the Kindle, its e-book reader, better suited to displaying newspapers.
Amazon has kept prices low in order to boost demand for its Kindle, which dominates the e-reader market but faces stiff competition from Sony and others.
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Kindle Touch 3G is the top of the line e-reader and offers the same new design and features of Kindle Touch, with the unparalleled added convenience of free 3G.
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Newspapers have a love-hate relationship with the Kindle as the larger, broadsheet-readable version of the e-reader isn't as popular as its smaller counterpart, says Seth Jayson, analyst at The Motley Fool.
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