Nook Wont Be "Entrenched" With Windows Says B&N CEO

Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch has today all but confirmed that the Nook hardware will never carry Windows 8 or any version of Windows in the future. Speaking with Fortune Magazine, Lynch let it be known that the primary reason Barnes & Noble and Microsoft are pairing up is their ability to bring the Nook ebook software to "millions of screens and windows." The Nook ereader hardware, on the other hand, will continue to run the open-sourced software known as Android through the future.

Microsoft is being called by Lynch an "ideal partner" for areas like distribution and big software launches due to such upcoming heroes as Windows 8. Barnes & Noble Nook software will be on that operating system in the form of an app that'll give users access to the company's ebook library. Microsoft engineers and "Redmond-based talent" as Fortune says will not be working together on Nook devices.

"Currently, we've not communicated anything related to the roadmap about any hardware collaboration on Nook. Nook, as you know, uses open sourcing. Microsoft is obviously very entrenched in Windows. On the reading software side, in reading technologies, they're making interesting integrations into Windows, potentially Office. That kind of work has already started. Definitively yes." – Lynch

So we've got the ability to work back and forth between Office and Barnes & Noble software including Nook for ebooks. We do not have, on the other hand, non-Android operating system bits headed to the Nook.

"So again we haven't announced anything specifically, but imagine an integration where an information worker, student, author, consumer, creates something in Office and has it immediately published for sale through the Nook book store. It starts to open a lot of exciting possibilities." – Lynch

The Nook book store might be getting a whole lot more interesting in the weeks and months ahead – Nook as a content editor? Very possibly!

[via Fortune]