Spring Design Pull the Plug on Alex E-Reader

There come times when a once famous product finds its end, so to speak, and is allowed to move to the halls of history in order to leave the present and future to other hardware, but this time the plug has been pulled on a somewhat less well known device from Spring Design.

Besides notebooks and tablets, the market of e-readers is also one that has seen a fast growth over the past couple of years.

In fact, around the same time as when Amazon's Kindle became its maker's best selling product, back in 2009, things really kicked off for its main rivals as well.

Unfortunately, it seems that some e-book readers that got released during 2010 didn't really see the success their developers hoped for.

One of the devices now revealed to be sinking into obscurity is the Alex, developed by Spring Design and, apparently, phasing out.

It seems the Spring Design webstore has had the two models (black and silver) out of stock for a while, prompting an inquiry on the part of The Ebook Reader. The e-mailed response was quite telling.

“Thank you for your interest in Alex. Spring Design is phasing out the current Alex Reader within the next 6 months. We have not announced the product change and introduce any new product yet.” Spring Design

Back when the Alex first came out, Spring Design hoped that it would eventually get it adopted globally, the main goal being to turn it into a rival for the Kindle.

Unfortunately, this didn't, obviously, happen, as other problems came up, like the lawsuit against B&N, whose Nook was said to have been based on Spring Design's work.

The latter accused Barnes & Noble of unfair competition, breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets, as the two had collaborated during 2009.

Either way, the next six months should see the total disappearance of the Alex from the current market and it is unclear if its maker will release anything in its stead.