Borders has beat Amazon.com to market with an e-book reader in the UK. While Amazon was struggling to meet consumer demand for the Kindle in the US, Borders partnered with iRex Technologies to sell the iRex iLiad Book Edition in some of its UK stores, Pocket-lint reports.

The iLiad boasts an 8.1-inch screen and has enough internal memory to store 100 books. It can handle up to an eight-gig memory card, pushing its capacity to around 10,000 books.

Borders will start selling the iLiad on May 10 for 399 pounds ($779). Amazon charges $399 for the Kindle. The lightweight iLiad comes pre-loaded with 50 "classic" books. It supports PDF, HTML, TXT and Mobipocket file formats, giving readers a wide variety of content choices.

No word on if Borders plans on expanding iLiad sales to more UK stores or go head-to-head against Amazon's Kindle in the States.