New York: The second number U.S. book store chain by sales Borders group Inc launched its long awaited electronic book store on Wednesday. along with applications for the number of leading smartphones in a bid to catch up to rival booksellers and generate sales in the fast growing e-book segment. The new e-bookstore will allow customers to download books in several formats include ePub, mobile technology and PDF.

After nine months launch of Nook e-reader from larger rival Barnes & Noble and after three months launch of Apple’s iPad tablet Computer which has e-reader capabilities. Borders Group launched electronic bookstore.

On Wednesday Borders Group introduced applications for research in Motion’s Blackberry smart phones and Apple’s iPhone & iPad and phones with Google’s Android software to allow users downloading of books on wider array of devices.

Borders said that it would be selling a total of 10 different kinds of e-readers in stores and online too by the end of 2010. The Borders’s e-bookstore will offer 1.5 million titles, including free books. Amazon says it offers 620,000 books as well as 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright titles, and Barnes & Noble says it offers 1 million titles.

The launch of e-bookstore comes at that time when struggling bookstore chain hunts to reverse a long side in sales and win back sales from Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com Inc and Apple. These were faster to sell e-books and have large head starts on Borders in the e-books market.

A report from Goldman Sachs in April forecast that e-book sales make up three percent of overall U.S. book sales and would rise to 12.8 percent by 2015