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2002.03.12

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ACCESS Delivers Next-Generation MicroBrowser for 2.5G, 3G Mobile Devices Using TI’s OMAP™ Processors and Symbian OS

NetFront v3.0 Wireless Profile on OMAP Evaluation Board to be Exhibited in ACCESS’ Booth at CTIA (Booth 3327) & CeBIT (Booth Hall 12, Stand B69)

Tokyo, Japan / Fremont, CA, USA / Oberhausen, Germany – March 12, 2002 – ACCESS Co., Ltd., the leading provider of microbrowsers for NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode phones, today announced it will offer a complete embedded browser solution, NetFront v3.0 Wireless Profile, using Texas Instruments, Inc.’s (TI) high-performance, ultra-low power OMAP1510 application processor for 2.5G and 3G wireless phones and the Symbian OS. ACCESS will demonstrate its new browser solution for the first time at CeBIT 2002 in Hannover, Germany, March 13-20, and at CTIA Wireless 2002 in Orlando, Florida, USA, March 18-20. ACCESS participates in TI’s DSP Third Party Program and TI Japan, Ltd. is a member of ACCESS’ Advanced Alliance Program. ACCESS will strongly support OMAP processors worldwide.

“We’re very pleased to unveil our next-generation embedded Internet browser, NetFront v3.0 Wireless Profile, leveraging TI’s digital signal processor (DSP)-based OMAP1510 processor to enable 2.5G and 3G mobile device users a way to more easily access multimedia-rich wireless applications without compromising battery life. With the new capabilities of 2.5 and 3G communication infrastructures, the functionality of mobile devices will become more diversified, resulting in ever expanding browser requirements. Wireless device manufacturers will now be able to take advantage of the compelling microbrowser functionality of our unique embedded Internet browser, on mobile devices powered by TI’s OMAP1510, which we believe is one of the best solutions in the market,” stated Toru Arakawa, President and CEO, ACCESS Co., Ltd.

“By providing the state-of-the-art microbrowser features of NetFront v3.0 Wireless Profile with the performance of TI’s DSP-based OMAP1510 application processor, wireless device manufacturers are able to offer a scalable microbrowser in a resource constrained environment,” said Paul Werp, worldwide marketing director for TI’s OMAP platform. “We are excited to work with ACCESS to quickly provide 2.5G and 3G wireless device manufacturers with this unique functionality.”

“NetFront v3.0 Mobile Browser is another clear demonstration of how Symbian enables capable next-generation applications to be built on top of the open, modular operating system for mobile phones” said Timo Bruns, Strategic Product Manager, Symbian.

About TI’s OMAP Platform
Wireless device manufacturers, carriers, high-level operating system (OS) providers and applications developers worldwide are aggressively working toward delivering 2.5G and 3G applications and services, and TI supports them with its OMAP family of advanced wireless modem and application processors for 2.5G and 3G mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and advanced mobile Internet appliances. Based on more than 10 years of wireless system expertise, OMAP processors deliver unparalleled processing performance and battery life so that consumers can enjoy a wide range of compelling wireless products and services such as multimedia messaging, streaming media, secure m-commerce, location-based services and interactive gaming in a sleek wireless PDA or phone. TI’s OMAP processors have been widely adopted by leading wireless device manufacturers including Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Palm, HP, HTC, LG and Sendo.

ACCESS’ Next-Generation NetFront v3.0 Browser
NetFront v3.0, ACCESS’ next-generation microbrowser, is a modular, scalable browser designed from the ground up to meet the unique requirements of resource constrained consumer information appliances. NetFront v3.0’s modular architecture allows for custom configurations for specific target hardware. This unique scalability allows NetFront to cover a broad range of appliance profiles from mobile phones to Digital TVs.

NetFront v3.0 Wireless Profile is the successor to Compact NetFront and Compact NetFront Plus, the most popular i-mode browser in the world. It supports enhanced features such as Dynamic HTML, ECMA Script (JavaScript), DOM (Document Object Model) and SSL (Secure Socket Layer), in addition to the standard WAP 2.0 Specification. NetFront v3.0 Wireless Profile provides support for the most important standards for mobile phone Internet access: XHTML Mobile Profile; WML 1.3 used in legacy WAP phone; and CompactHTML (CHTML) used in i-mode phones. NetFront v3.0 Wireless Profile provides native support for these standards so mobile phones can seamlessly display content in any of these formats. In addition to the Internet protocol stacks (HTTP and WTCP/IP) part of the WAP 2.0 specifications, it provides a WAP 1.x legacy stack option to give a clear transition path to 3G wireless Internet services while maintaining investments in today’s services. JV-Lite2, J2ME compliant Java runtime environment and MMS client will be available also as optional modules.

About ACCESS Co, Ltd.
ACCESS Co. Ltd. (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4813) is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with ACCESS Systems America, its US subsidiary, in Fremont, California, and with ACCESS Systems Europe, its German subsidiary, in Oberhausen, Germany. ACCESS is a leading global provider of software and services for IP-based consumer electronic devices. 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 microbrowser 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 was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market on February 26, 2001. More information is available at www.access.co.jp/english/


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.

ACCESS is a registered trademark in Japan. NetFront, Compact NetFront are registered trademarks of ACCESS Co., Ltd. in Japan. NetFront is a registered trademark of NetFront Communications, Inc. in the United States and is used under license. Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S and other countries. Texas Instruments and OMAP are trademarks or registered trademarks of Texas Ins truments, Inc. Symbian, Symbian OS, the Symbian Developer Network, and other Symbian related marks or logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symbian, Ltd. i-mode is a registered trademark of NTT Docomo, Inc. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.