The makers of Nook e-reader, Barnes & Noble have slashed prices of three of their Nook tablets on Monday.
This price cut comes in time for the start of the school shopping and amid competition from rival Amazon that it will be introducing a new version of Kindle Fire tablet.
The largest American bookstore chain, Barnes & Noble said that the price of its 8 GB Nook tablet was reduced from $199 to $179; and Nook Color is down by $20 to $149.
They said they also reduced the retail price of their 16 GB tablet from $249 to $199, a 50 percent reduction.
Barnes & Noble said, the Nook has about 27 percent of market sales for e-books, while its rival online retail giant, Amazon has about 60 percent of e-book and e-reader sales.
To stay in the competition with Amazon, Barnes & Noble had to slash prices more than once, this is in spite of Nook devices being popular among consumers. These price reductions also ate into the earnings of the company.
Barnes & Noble reported a lower-than expected revenue in its fourth fiscal quarter with revenue of the Nook tablet falling by 10.5 percent. The company raised its bet on e-books for its future. The Manhattan Barnes & Noble store already has a sign out reflecting the change in the pricing.
The seven-inch Nook tablet was released on Nov. 17 2011, it runs on both stock firmware provided by Barnes and Noble and Android based operating systems like CyanogenMod.
This price cut is the latest turn in the tablet wars since Apple with its iPad and iOS continue to capture the tablet market in spite of increase in competition. Microsoft will be entering the ring with its launch of Surface tablet that will run on Windows in October.