New York, New York – October 15, 2007 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, announced that Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com) will market books, CDs and DVDs on BlackBerry® smartphones. An agreement with Digby, a leading mobile commerce service provider, establishes the “Barnes & Noble Storefront” for all current Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM) BlackBerry smartphone users, effective immediately. The Barnes & Noble.com Storefront is updated on a daily basis to keep content fresh and features new releases, bestsellers, and special promotions.
“Consumers now have a fully stocked Barnes & Noble right on their BlackBerry with access to hundreds of thousands of products available for delivery in three business days or less,” said Marie J. Toulantis, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble.com. “Digby on the BlackBerry delivers a convenient buying experience, available to our customers anytime and anywhere. With their help, we’re taking a leadership role in the development of this important distribution channel.”
The Barnes & Noble Storefront includes:
- Rich content that is optimized for BlackBerry smartphones, including full product descriptions and images of all products.
- Mobile shopping cart with support for multiple products and vendors in a single order.
- Calendar and address book integration on BlackBerry smartphones, including reminders for special events.
- Secure transactions and password-protected buying.
“The growth of the BlackBerry smartphone customer base and the robustness of the BlackBerry development platform are attracting and enabling innovative companies like Barnes & Noble and Digby to provide our customers with a range of value-added applications and services,” said Jeff McDowell, vice president of global alliances at Research In Motion. “The ability to shop online at Barnes & Noble using a BlackBerry smartphone adds another dimension of convenience to the mobile experience.”
Digby radically simplifies the mobile buying experience by combining rich content with an intuitive shopping process that is optimized for mobile devices such as Blackberry. Its goal is to radically improve the mobile purchasing experience for consumers around the world
“We are thrilled to have Barnes & Noble join the Digby service on BlackBerry smartphones,” said David Sikora, chief executive officer of Digby. “The adoption of mobile as an important marketing and sales channel by Barnes & Noble and other name-brand retailers is validation that the time for mobile commerce has arrived. We’re looking forward to working closely with Barnes & Noble as they look to drive continued innovation in the mobile channel.”
The Barnes & Noble Storefront is available for free download on all current BlackBerry smartphones. For more information about Digby, visit www.digby.com.
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