Sony team up with Borders to sell e-reader

Borders to sell new electronic book

4 April 2006 11:30 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Sony and the book store Borders today announced an agreement to make the Sony Reader available through about 200 Borders stores in the US.

The move shows how aggressive Sony is to have the electronic e-reader taken seriously amongst the book reading fraternity rather than it just being yet another gadget.

Roughly the size of a paperback novel, but thinner than most (about 0.5 inches), the device can store hundreds of books and other documents using a combination of internal flash memory and optional Memory Stick or Secure Digital flash memory cards.

As part of the relationship, Borders customers will also have the
opportunity to purchase prepaid cards, redeemable online for e-books at the Sony CONNECT service which will offer a broad selection of trade fiction and non-fiction e-books from major and independent publishers.

"In addition to e-books, the Sony CONNECT service will offer Borders customers who buy the Sony Reader access to a broad selection of web content in the form of blogs, news feeds and online magazines", said Lee Shirani, vice president of Sony CONNECT Inc.

The Reader will also be able to store and display personal documents in Adobe PDF format as well as JPEG photos.