ANN ARBOR ? Borders Group will redefine its electronic book strategy by selling new e-Book readers at prices less than the competition, the company said Friday.
In August, Borders said it will sell the Kobe eReader for $149.99, more than 100 bucks less than the hot selling Amazon Kindle, which retails for $259.99. The Kobe eReader is made by Kobo Inc. of Toronto, a company owned by Indigo Books & Music.
Borders new eBook store will provide access to more than one million titles, compared to about 500,000 from Kindle. Pre orders will be taken in June.
The digital books application developed by Kobo will work on most wireless devices, including the Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Research In Motion?s BlackBerry and phones using Google?s Android operating system.
The move comes about five months after Borders announced its partnership with Kobo, which had secured $15 million in financing, including some money from Borders, to develop its technology.
Forrester Research projected last fall that industry sales of e-readers would rise from about 3 million in 2009 to 10 million in 2010.
a>>
