Barnes and Noble has just outsourced all of the Nook software development to Bahwan CyberTek. This company will take over certain NOOK technology services, including cloud management and development support for NOOK software.
Barnes & Noble said that as a result of the agreement with BCT, it plans to close both its Santa Clara R&D center and Taiwan offices in July.
This transition is expected to result in annualized cash savings of approximately $13 million, which includes approximately $8 million of expense reductions and approximately $5 million of capital expenditure reductions. In the first quarter of fiscal 2017, B&N expects to record severance charges and transition related costs of approximately $6 million.
In the last few years Barnes and Noble has been completely outsourcing all of their Nook hardware. Their tablets are now being designed by Samsung and their latest generation Nook Glowlight Plus was designed by Netronix. It makes sense that all of their apps and firmware updates for e-readers are now being outsourced as well.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
