U.S. bookseller Borders Group launched its own electronic book (e-book) store Wednesday, becoming the latest player entering the increasingly crowded e- book market.
The company said its e-book store will offer more than 1.5 million titles, including thousands of free titles, which are available in a variety of formats including ePub, mobile and PDF.
Borders is the second largest bookstore chain by sales in the United States after Barnes & Noble.
Barnes & Noble, online retailer Amazon.com and information technology giants such as Apple have been vying for shares in the still small but fast growing electronic reading market, introducing e-reading devices and expanding their digital content offerings.
Barnes & Noble’s e-book store boasts more than one million titles, while Amazon said it now offers about 620,000 titles as well as over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright books.
Borders believed there are still opportunities for it to secure a position in the young e-book market.
“The race to emerge as a retail leader within the digital category is just starting,” Mike Edwards, chief executive officer of Borders, said in a statement.
“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, ” Edwards noted.
“We believe we are very well positioned to come out strong and to ultimately claim about a 17 percent e-book market share by this time next year,” he said.