Samsung bowed its latest Galaxy tablet, a 10-inch model with a Full HD display, 13-hour battery life and microSD support for up to 200 GB storage. Multitasking tools allow users to open two apps side by side, said the company. A promotion running through Aug. 20 offers Galaxy Tab A buyers two tickets for Suicide Squad, which opens in theaters Aug. 5. Galaxy Tab A prices start at $299 for the 16 GB model.

Barnes & Noble and Samsung signed a “revised partnership” agreement May 17 that sharply curtails the number of co-branded Galaxy-Nook tablets B&N will be obligated to source from Samsung compared with the terms of the “commercial agreement” the companies signed two years ago (see 1408210024), B&N said in a 10-K SEC filing Thursday. Under the revision, B&N “agreed to a minimum purchase commitment of devices with a total retail value equal to” $10 million during the first 12 months after the launch of any new co-branded Galaxy-Nook tablet, the 10-K said. With several different Galaxy-Nook models averaging between $100 and $400 in retail price, the $10 million commitment is sharply lower than the minimum 1 million units B&N was required to buy from Samsung in the first 12 months of launch under the 2014 agreement, the 10-K said. “The amended minimum purchase commitment replaces all prior purchase commitments” that B&N and Samsung had agreed to, the 10-K said. Samsung representatives didn't comment Friday. The revision was one of several “actions” B&N took to reduce losses in its Nook operations, the 10-K said. B&N also exited its Nook apps and video businesses, and outsourced Nook cloud management and other functions to Bahwan CyberTek, enabling it to close its offices in Santa Clara, California, and Taipei, Taiwan, the 10-K said. The Nook business incurred losses of about $65 million in the fiscal year ended April 30, B&N executives told a company Analyst Day event Thursday. Their goal is to reduce those losses to $30 million-$40 million in the fiscal year ending April 2017, they said.

Amazon is taking pre-orders for the first Kindle e-reader with Bluetooth audio, a $79 model that’s thinner and lighter than the previous version with double the memory (now 4 GB), it said Wednesday. The entry-level Kindle has built-in audio support, enabling visually impaired users to use Amazon’s VoiceView screen reader on Kindle to read the content on the screen without an adaptor, it said. The feature is enabled through an “out-of-box experience specifically for visually-impaired customers” that allows them to pair their Kindle with Bluetooth headphones or a speaker, Amazon said. The Export Notes feature allows users to send notes and highlights from a book to themselves via email, which are then available as a PDF for printing or as a simple file that can be opened in a spreadsheet app, it said. Export Notes will be available as part of a free, over-the-air software update in the coming weeks, said Amazon. The Kindle will be available in black or white, with a July 7 release date.

IDC sees 2016 global tablet shipments declining for the second straight year, dropping 9.6 percent from 2015, the firm said in a Thursday report. The tablet market “has seen its peak,” and will face down years in 2016 and 2017, though detachable tablet growth will trigger “a slight rebound in 2018 and beyond,” it said. Detachable tablets are only 16 percent of the market, but their share will nearly double to 31 percent in 2020, it said. Tablet makers “are slowly shifting focus toward the detachable tablet market segment,” which has quickly resulted in increased product offerings, lower average selling prices and broadened consumer awareness for the category, it said. “Many traditional PC manufacturers have assumed the detachable category to be a natural extension of the PC market and perhaps assumed it would rightfully be theirs to capture. Now they find themselves in head-to-head competition with a slew of new manufacturers that have created their market off of smartphone and slate tablet growth.”

A week after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos touted a Q1 doubling of Fire tablet sales in the company’s earnings release (see 1604290042), Amazon slashed another $10 off the price of the starter model. The leader 8 GB Fire was priced at a 20 percent discount Monday at $39, and the Fire HD 6 was cut 30 percent to $69. ABI Research cited Amazon in March (see 1603140055) for bringing a "significant change" in the tablet market’s competitive landscape with the launch of the $49 Fire, which came in far below the average vendor selling price of $323. Amazon ranked third behind Apple and Samsung in Q4 in tablet shipments, said ABI.

The global tablet market “began 2016 just as 2015 left off,” with another quarter of declines, Strategy Analytics said in a Thursday report. Q1 tablet shipments fell 10 percent to 46.5 million units in a quarter in which Huawei “cracked the top five vendors globally” with its 66 percent jump in shipments from Q1 a year earlier, the research firm said. Apple shipped 10.3 million iPads in Q1, a 19 percent decline from Q1 a year earlier and a 36 percent sequential decrease from Q4 “on low seasonality” following 2015's holiday selling season, it said. Though Apple’s share slipped 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier to 22.1 percent, it still maintained the top-brand share over Samsung, which saw its share slip 3 percentage points to 14 percent, it said. Android-branded vendors shipped 30 million units collectively in Q1, down 16 percent from Q1 a year earlier and 33 percent lower sequentially from Q4, it said. IDC, in its own quarterly tablets report Thursday, pegged this year’s Q1 market at 39.6 million units, a 14.7 percent decline from Q1 a year earlier. Like Strategy Analytics, IDC blamed the Q1 decline on early-2016 “seasonality,” but also “an overall disinterested customer base.” Though slate tablets still accounted for 87.6 percent of all shipments, the segment “has become synonymous with the low end of the market,” IDC said. “While this may bode well for vendors like Amazon that rely on hardware sales to increase their ecosystem size, it has not helped vendors who rely solely on greater margins for hardware sales.” IDC pegged iPad's Q1 share at 25.9 percent, down from 27.2 percent a year earlier, but well ahead of Samsung, with a Q1 share that declined to 15.2 percent from 18 percent a year earlier.

Amazon added color to the Fire tablet line, it said Thursday, now offering blue, magenta and tangerine backs and trim and more storage options. Prices start at $49 for the 7-inch Fire with 8 GB storage, with the 16 GB version listing for $20 more. Fire Kids Edition added a 16 GB version that went on sale Thursday for $119. Kids Edition Fire tablets are now available with a green case, joining the pink and blue options, Amazon said. The kids’ version comes with a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited with access to over 10,000 age-appropriate books, videos, educational apps, and games, plus a two-year guarantee to replace the tablet “if anything happens,” it said.

With Verizon set to report earnings Thursday, Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche predicted Wednesday the carrier will report a decline of 120,000 wireless phone connections and 576,000 tablet adds, for net growth. “On the wireless side, we believe VZ had a relatively quiet quarter characterized by strength in margins and churn offset by weaker service revenues and postpaid phone losses,” Fritzsche said in a note to investors, referring to the carrier's stock symbol. “We expect a lot of focus on VZ's recent acquisitions -- RYOT Corp., Complex, Awesomeness TV -- and how they fit within its digital media/AOL platforms. We do not expect any commentary around a possible Yahoo bid.”

ABI Research sees global tablet shipments sinking below 140 million units in 2021, from 207 million in 2015, it said in a Wednesday report. Demand for branded tablets in advanced market economies is decreasing “due to saturation, slow replacement cycles, greater influence of business purchases, and substitution,” the research firm said. China and other Asian markets have decreased demand for white box tablets due to shifts to branded tablets and reliance on smartphones and phablets, it said. "China is evolving, moving away from white box products to support local and global brand manufacturers," it said. "As this behavior continues across other markets in Southeast Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America, the potential for white box tablets to remain viable will all but go away." Though advanced markets had two-thirds of all branded tablets shipped in 2015, “this will soon flip,” ABI said. The firm predicts that by 2021, 57 percent of branded tablet shipments “will come from emerging and developing economies."

The NTIA-driven multistakeholder process crafting a privacy, transparency and accountability best practices guide for commercial and private drone operators scheduled its next meeting April 8, 1-5 p.m., at the American Institute of Architects boardroom, said a Federal Register notice published Thursday. Participants, who have been working on this issue since last summer, are discussing a couple of draft guides -- a combined one developed by the Center for Democracy and Technology and Hogan Lovells, and another presented by a news media coalition represented by Holland & Knight (see 1602240048). Issues largely involve how detailed the document should be and how it might affect news companies. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Wednesday approved a broad aviation policy bill that requires NTIA to provide a report by July 31 on the ongoing multistakeholder process (see 1603150014 and 1603160028).