Barnes & Noble Drops Nook Tablet Prices for Mother's Day

Still haven't decided what to get your mom for Mother's Day? If you're tired of the same old card and flowers combo, Barnes & Nobles is offering a discount on its Nook devices.

Available in store and online, the 7-inch Nook HD is available for $149 (8GB) and $179 (16GB), a savings of $50. The 9-inch Nook HD+, meanwhile, is now selling for $179 (16GB) and $209 (32GB), normally $269 and $299, respectively.

The discount includes free shipping. The offer ends on May 12; if you want to get it in time for Mother's Day, you'll have to order by May 7.

The retailer offered similar discounts last year.

The price drops, meanwhile, come shortly after the retailer added Google Play to its HD and HD+ tablets, giving them hundreds of thousands of apps. For some time now, the lack of available apps and other media has hampered Barnes & Noble's efforts to compete against Amazon's Kindle and Google's Nexus 7, so the addition of Android apps via Google Play could help its chances.

In March, Barnes & Noble's Nook Media division also announced new partnerships with a number of major studios and content providers to update its Nook Video library. It also promised the addition of in-app payments.

Whether or not that encourages more consumers to pick up a Nook remains to be seen. The 2012 holiday season was rather disappointing for Barnes & Noble's Nook division, which dropped 12.6 percent over the same time period in 2011.

For more, see PCMag's reviews of the Barnes & Noble Nook HD and Nook HD+.

UPDATE: Amazon has also joined the Mother's Day discount game. The retailer is offering $20 off its 7-inch Kindle Fire HD, which retails for $199 (16GB) or $229 (32GB); just enter "FIRE4MOM" at checkout. It does not appear to apply to the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD, though that version got its own price drop in recent months.