The growing e-book reader market will have yet another addition - the new dual-screen e-book reader from Spring Design! While one screen will facilitate the process of reading e-books, the other will feature an Android-powered cellular device!

The Monday-introduced Spring Design device called the 'Alex' will attempt to take on market-leading Amazon and Sony e-readers with its characteristic black-and-white electronic paper display, and a full Web browsing on its 3.5-inch LCD screen.

Going by the information forwarded by the company, the Alex will essentially be more versatile than its rivals largely because it supports "dynamic hyperlinked multimedia information." The device will link the Web to content on the six-inch E-Ink display, thereby allowing publishers to include hyperlinks that will take readers to Web pages.

In addition, the Alex also includes support for Wi-Fi and 3G data networks, along with an authoring tool to add notes and images to other content. It will also allow users to capture and cache Web content to view it on the electronic paper display.

Priscilla Lu, CEO of Spring Design, said about the device: "This is the start of a whole new experience of reading content on e-books, potentially igniting a whole new industry in multimedia e- book publishing for secondary authors to create supplementary content that is hyperlinked to the text."

Lu added: "We are bringing life to books with audio, video, and annotations."