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Press Releases
2003.10.10

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ACCESS NetFront™ Browser Technology Now Powers 10 New Palm Powered Handhelds

Deployments Demonstrate Continued Global Expansion of NetFront Technology

Tokyo, Japan / Fremont, CA, USA – October 10, 2003 – ACCESS (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4813), a global provider of mobile content delivery and access technologies, announced today that its NetFront® v3.0 browser technology has been deployed in 10 Palm OS® 5-based handhelds in the last 12 months.

NetFront is the default browser for Sony’s CLIÉ UX50, UX40, NX90, NX80v, NX73v, NX70v, NX60, and provides the core browser technology behind Palm’s browser for its Tungsten C and for Handspring’s Blazer 3.0 browser for the Treo 600, as well as Tapwave’s new Zodiac entertainment console. These Palm Powered devices represent some of the most advanced devices currently available on the handheld and smartphone markets.

With its increasing prevalence in PDAs and mobile phones worldwide, NetFront v3.0 and its predecessors are the most widely deployed and actively used embedded Web browsers in the world. NetFront v3.0’s market success over the past year is attributable to its unique set of capabilities. NetFront v3.0 is the only mobile browser in the world that supports Palm OS, Windows Mobile OS, Linux OS and Symbian OS as well as mobile environments like BREW. NetFront v3.0 is modular, scalable, feature-rich, WAP 2.0-compliant and offers advanced technologies like Smart-Fit which optimizes Web content for small screens. NetFront v3.0 supports a wide variety of non-PC Internet devices ranging from mobile phones and handhelds to automobile telematics systems.

“The number of new Palm OS 5-based handhelds to hit the market in the last several months is a testament to the power and flexibility of the Palm OS platform, said David Nagel, president and CEO, of PalmSource. “ACCESS’ technology on Palm OS is designed to offer mobile computing features that enable a rich Internet browsing experience for our Palm Powered customers.”

“The recent launch of these Palm OS 5-based devices and their integration with NetFront technology represent a significant global endorsement of our browser technology,” stated Toru Arakawa, president and CEO of ACCESS. “We have worked very hard with PalmSource and our Palm OS partners to ensure seamless integration with NetFront technology, and the payoff is this abundance of Palm OS handhelds taking advantage of our state-of-the-art Internet browsing capabilities.”

About NetFront
NetFront v3.0 supports the WAP 2.0 specification as well as the latest W3C specifications, including support for HTML 4.01, XHTML (XHTML Mobile Profile), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and SSL v3.0 (Secure Socket Layer). NetFront v3.0 also provides unique features such as Smart-Fit rendering, a display technology that intelligently rendersWeb pages to fit the narrow screen widths of mobile devices, eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling while enabling an uncompromised mobile browsing experience.

About ACCESS Co., Ltd.
ACCESS Co. Ltd. (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4813) is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, and has subsidiaries in Fremont, California, Oberhausen, Germany, and Beijing, China. ACCESS is a global provider of mobilecontent delivery and access technologies for information appliances. ACCESS’ embedded NetFront® and Compact NetFront® browsers power 253 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, over 100 million ACCESS software licenses have shipped from more than 90 major Internet device manufactures (As of May, 2003). ACCESS was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market on February 26, 2001. More information is available at www.access.co.jp/english/ or www.access-us-inc.com.


ACCESS is a registered trademark in Japan. NetFront is registered trademark of ACCESS Co., Ltd. in Japan and in the United States. i-mode is a registered trademark of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. Palm OS is a registered trademark and Palm Powered is a trademark of PalmSource Inc. a subsidiary of Palm Inc. All other trademarks are the property of 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
China Contact:
ACCESS China Inc.
Delia Liu
86 (10) 6566-9636
delia_cn@access.co.jp
US Contacts:
ACCESS Systems America
Manuel Morales
(510) 284-0708
mmorales@access-us-inc.com
Bite Communications Bill Danon
(415) 365-0369
bill.danon@bitepr.com