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Press Releases
2002.04.23

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ACCESS Participates in the Symbian Platinum Program

ACCESS to promote its Internet browser for Symbian OS

Tokyo, Japan / Fremont, CA, USA / Oberhausen, Germany – April 23, 2002 – ACCESS Co., Ltd., a leading global provider of software and services for IP-based consumer electronics devices, today announced that it signed an agreement to participate in the Symbian Platinum Program for the purpose of developing and promoting its Internet browser, NetFront, in the mobile device market.

The Symbian Platinum Program provides members with technical and marketing support for Symbian OS solutions. The companies that are approved as Platinum Partners benefit from privileged access to the Symbian OS Development Kit and various joint marketing activities.

Under the terms of the agreement of the Symbian Platinum Program, ACCESS will optimize its next-generation Internet browser, NetFront v3.0, for the Symbian OS. ACCESS will be participating and demonstrating its solution for the Symbian OS at the Symbian Developer Expo 2002, held April 23-24 at ExCel, in London, UK. Additional expo information can be found at: URL: http://www.symbian.com/devexpo/index.html

“Browsing provides key functionality in the mobile world, enabling users to access a wide range of entertaining and informative services, and increasing ARPU for network operators,” said Ian Weston, vice president, Development Partnerships, Symbian. “Symbian welcomes ACCESS, one of the leading embedded browser providers and a major player in the Japanese market, to the Symbian Platinum Program.”

“We are very pleased to announce our participation in the Symbian Platinum Program and to introduce our next-generation Internet browser for the Symbian OS. We believe that NetFront v3.0 optimized for the Symbian OS will be a key solution for next-generation mobile devices,” said Toru Arakawa, president and chief executive officer, ACCESS Co., Ltd.

ACCESS’ Next-Generation Browser NetFront v3.0
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 NetFrontand 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/


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. 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.

Contacts

Asia Contact:
ACCESS Co., Ltd., Japan
Kazunori Takahashi
81 (3) 5259-3685
prinfo@access.co.jpcom
Europe Contact:
ACCESS Systems Europe GmbH
Claudia Hoeck
49 (208) 8290-6432
hoeck@access-sys-eu.com
US Contacts:
ACCESS Systems America
Manuel Morales
(510) 284-0708
mmorales@access-us-inc.com
Antenna Group Public Relations Carrie Bonforte
(415) 977-1925
carrie@antennagroup.com