Borders finally looks set to catch up to competitors such as Amazon (with the Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (with the nook) with today’s announcement of the launch of its own ebook store. With store sales dropping over 11 percent in its latest financial quarter, Borders is hoping that the ebook market will help it turn its fortunes around.
“The race to emerge as a retail leader within the digital category is just starting,” said Mike
Edwards, Chief Executive Officer for Borders, Inc. “During the past several months, we’ve been carefully crafting a digital strategy, one that has great content and a device neutral philosophy backed by the Borders brand as its cornerstones. We believe we are very well positioned to come out strong and to ultimately claim about a 17 percent eBook market share by this time next year.”
The Borders eBook store is powered by global eReading service Kobo (which it backs along with other book retailers) and comes with more than 1.5 million titles in a variety of formats, including ePub, mobile and PDF. It also sells a number of devices including the Kobo eReader.
Borders is also launching its own version of the free Kobo ebook app for the Apple iPhone and iPad as well as BlackBerry and Android devices.