Press Releases

ACCESS’ Linux Microbrowser Adds Support For Trolltech’s Qt Application Development Toolkit

Qt Support in ACCESS’ NetFront^™2.6 for Linux Demonstrates Strong Commitment to Linux Platform

FREMONT,CA – January 9, 2002 – ACCESS Systems America, a global provider of innovative embedded browser software for Internet appliances, today announced that it now supports Trolltech’s Qt application development toolkit for ACCESS’ popular NetFront^® 2.6 for Linux microbrowser. Using Qt, ACCESS’ customers can develop Internet applications that can easily be re-targeted to various Linux-based Internet appliances.

“Linux has become a major platform for non-PC applications, including gaming consoles, PDAs, set-top boxes and Internet appliances,” said Marty Smuin, vice president, sales and marketing, ACCESS Systems America. “By accommodating Qt support in our microbrowser we let the Linux community know that we are serious in our efforts to support Linux-based platforms.”

“We are extremely pleased that ACCESS has ported NetFront to Qt,” said Haavard Nord, Trolltech’s CEO. “It’s an affirmation of the emerging power of embedded Linux, and the strength of Qt/Embedded and Qt Palmtop in the evolving world of wireless computing.”

The port of NetFront to Qt delivers two benefits to ACCESS and its customers. ACCESS’ Linux microbrowser now runs on all devices that support Qt/Embedded and Qtopia, the Qt-based embedded application environment. And ACCESS’customers can use Qt to develop Internet applications that run on a large number of Linux-based Internet appliances. The Qt version of NetFront for Linux will be released to the U.S. market first.

The Qt Application Development Toolkit
Qt is a C++ toolkit that greatly reduces the time and resources developers need to write for multiple platforms. Qt reduces the job of porting to a simple recompilation, thereby eliminating the problems and costs of maintaining separate versions for different platforms. The Qt/Embedded version can be scaled to a very efficient memory footprint for embedded Linux applications.

NetFront 2.6 for Linux
In December of 2000, ACCESS introduced its NetFront 2.6 for Linux Software Development Kit (SDK), the first to make an embedded browser available for the Linux operating system platform. NetFront 2.6 for Linux is a compact and powerful browser that is optimized for networked Internet appliances with limited hardware memory configurations. The browser kernel is less than 270 KB of code and fits in 1.3 megabytes of ROM and 2 megabytes of RAM. It supports the full HTML 3.2 specification and selected portions of HTML 4.0. It supports frames, JavaScript, cookies, web printing and multilingual capabilities.

The NetFront 2.6 for Linux SDK lets developers customize the user interface to their desired look and feel and add plug-ins tailored for specific applications. These modules, available from ACCESS, include Internet mail, Japanese language input kits, SSL capabilities, Java^™ Virtual Machine, animation plug-ins, and more.

ACCESS’NetFront browser operates in resource-constrained environments on a wide variety of embedded CPUs, such as ARM cores, StrongARM cores, Hitachi’s SuperH series, IBM/Motorola’s PowerPC, MIPS Cores, and Mitsubishi’s M32R/D series. In addition to Linux, NetFront also runs on various RTOS including micro-ITRON, OS-9, pSOSystem, VxWorks, Windows CE, and others.

Written in ANSI C, NetFront 2.6 Linux SDK is available as a full source code package. The SDK includes the NetFront 2.6 browser kernel, a sample user interface module and PIM suite, the Internet mail module, a sample library for peer interface layer and graphics layer (GTK/SDL), and documentation. An AVE^™-SSL, SSL version 2/3 module is optional. A free evaluation version of NetFront 2.6 for Linux is available at the company’s web site http://www.access-us-inc.com. (Go to detailed information for NetFront 2.6 for Linux.)

About ACCESS
ACCESS Systems America, Inc. (ASA) is the U.S. subsidiary of ACCESS Co.Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4813), a leading global provider of innovative embedded browser software for Internet appliances. ACCESS’ embedded NetFront^® and Compact NetFront^® browsers power over 150 different commercial products worldwide including mobile phones, digital televisions, set-top boxes, game consoles, PDAs, car navigation systems, web phones, kiosk terminals and intranet terminals. ACCESS’ Compact NetFront micro browser is most widely deployed in phones for NTT DoCoMo’s popular i-mode service. To date, more than 53 million ACCESS software licenses have shipped from more than 40 major Internet device manufacturers. ACCESS Systems America, Inc. is based in Fremont, CA. More information is available at www.access-us-inc.com.

About Trolltech
Trolltech is the creator of Qt, a cross-platform object-oriented C++ application toolkit that lets developers write one source-tree that can be ported among Microsoft Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X and embedded Linux platforms with a simple recompile. Qt is the basis of many successful commercial applications worldwide, and was used to develop the open source, KDE desktop environment. Trolltech is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices in Brisbane, Australia, and Santa Clara, California. More about Trolltech can be found on the web at www.trolltech.com.

This press release is not an offer of any securities of ACCESS Co., Ltd. for sale in the United States. Such securities have not been registered in the United States under the Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent such registration or an exemption there from.

NetFront, Compact NetFront, JV-Lite^™, AVE, and AVE-TCP are registered trademarks owned by ACCESS Co., Ltd. in Japan. Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. NetFront is a registered trademark of NetFront Communications, Inc. in the United States and is used under a license. i-mode is a trademark of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

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