Barnes and Noble NOOK Sold on Amazon?

Nook may be one of the hottest gadgets around, but you are going to find it difficult to get your hands on one anytime soon if you didn’t order yours weeks ago. The current estimate shipping date for Nook is February 2010, and that could move as B&N gets more orders for the device. As it’s the case with all top gadgets, when they go out of stock, people who have bought multiple of them put their gadgets up for sale for a nice premium. You can always try eBay to get your hands on a Nook, but that could cost you close to $600. It seems Amazon is no different either.

The case with Amazon is even more interesting. Amazon usually doesn’t create a product page for a device that it doesn’t intend to sell. So could we really see Amazon start selling Nook units in the future? We do know that Jeff Bezos has been somewhat critical of Nook in the past. But Amazon is not a company that is afraid of competition. The company has sold Sony Reader in the past, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it started selling Nook as well. Of course, before Amazon does anything, Nook needs to come back in stock. Buying a Nook for $600 is not fun whether you are buying it from Amazon or eBay. For that price, you are better off picking up a Kindle DX or Sony Reader Daily Edition. If we are lucky, Apple tablet may go for that price.

I don’t consider Nook to be a Kindle killer. Not yet anyway. Amazon has given us enough hints about Kindle 3 to suggest that the new device will be much more powerful than what we have seen so far on the market. Nook on the other hand is a first generation device and will have its buggy features. But still, it’d be nice to be able to pick the device up on from Amazon and other e-retailers. We will have to wait and see how B&N plans this out.

Your take: do you want Nook to be sold on Amazon.com as well as through other e-retailers?