Redmond have announced that Microsoft Reader, Microsoft's turn of the millennium answer to what eventually succeeded as the Kindle and now the iPad is to be shut down.

Released officially for Pocket PC 2002 and via a small number of OEM's for the Windows CE Core OS market in 2001, Reader promised to open up your Windows Powered Device to the world of eBooks. With a market place featuring a humble 60,000 titles, Reader had been kicked into the long grass some time ago and all but abandoned by publishers.
In a statement posted on the official Reader website Microsoft have stated that they will be discontinuing the Reader .lit format on 8th November 2011, effectively preventing the publication of new materials for the format.

Reader will then be discontinued and all downloads removed from microsoft.com on 30th August 2012.

Microsoft is able to kill off the format as .lit is a DRM enabled technology that requires device activation for the purchasing of premium content.

For those with a .lit library there is some good news however as the program will continue to work after the August 2012 cut-off.

As with so many of Microsoft’s efforts, Reader was ahead of its time and largely under appreciated. Whether they released to market before the publishing industry was willing to accept the digital market place. Or whether the small number of not quite fit for book reading 'Pocket PC' devices was the root cause of its demise, perhaps we will never know.

It is however one more legacy technology that once reflected the energy and importance of Windows CE to Microsoft, that is about to become a footnote beneath our legacy community.

View: Microsoft Reader Discontinuation Statement