Barnes & Noble unveils $199 Nook Tablet

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NEW YORK — US bookseller Barnes & Noble unveiled a new version of its Nook tablet computer Tuesday, a device with the same $199 price tag as Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

The seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) Nook Tablet also has eight gigabytes of memory like the tablet released by online retail giant Amazon in November.

Apple’s cheapest iPad costs $499. Barnes & Noble released a $249 Nook Tablet with 16 gigabytes of memory in November.

Barnes & Noble also said it was slashing the price of its Nook Color electronic book reader to $169 from the current $199.

The New York-based bookseller also announced its fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday.

The company said its net profit fell to $52 million in the quarter compared to $60.6 million in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue was up five percent at $2.4 billion in the quarter which ended on January 28.

“Our physical book sales at our stores increased more than four percent over last year,” Barnes & Noble chief executive William Lynch said in a statement.

“Our Nook digital content business continues to grow rapidly,” Lynch added. “According to some of the largest US publishers, we maintained or slightly gained share in the e-book market during the third quarter.”

Barnes & Noble said sales of digital content and Nook tablets and e-readers rose 38 percent during the quarter to $542 million.