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Press Releases
2003.10.21

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ACCESS’ NetFront™ Browser Powers Newly Released Handspring Treo 600

NetFront Complements Treo 600’s Ease-of-Use Bringing an Optimal Mobile Internet Experience to Consumers and Business Users

Tokyo, Japan / Fremont, CA, USA – October 21, 2003 – ACCESS (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4813), a global provider of mobile content delivery and access technologies, announced today that its NetFront® v3.0 is the core browser technology for Handspring’s newly-released Treo 600 and its Blazer Web Browser. The innovative compact design of the Treo 600 offers a breakthrough in usability, and the NetFront-powered Blazer browser provides complementary ease-of-use for the mobile Internet.

The Blazer Web Browser optimizes mobile Internet use with support for a full range of content types, including HTML 4.0, XHTML Basic and Mobile Profile, WML 1.3, cHTML (i-mode), a variety of image formats, style sheets, JavaScript and more. The browser also provides unique features such as saved pages, vertical and horizontal viewing modes, cross-application integration with email, phone and SMS and the ability to download ring tones, pictures, and applications over the air directly to the Treo 600.

“The Treo 600 offers consumers and business users a richer and easier wireless voice and data experience than has ever been possible before, particularly with regard to accessing and navigating the Internet,” said Joe Sipher, vice president, marketing for Handspring. “An integral component is the ACCESS NetFront browser, which provides the core technology for the Treo 600’s Blazer Web Browser.”

The use of NetFront browser technology in the Treo 600 demonstrates the continued market adoption of ACCESS’ browser technology in Palm OS powered devices. NetFront browser technology has already been deployed in ten other Palm OS 5 devices, including the Palm Tungsten C.

“The combination of NetFront and the Treo 600 is a perfect match, delivering unequaled mobile computing and Web access capabilities for users,” said Toru Arakawa, president and CEO of ACCESS. “We’re thrilled to count Handspring and the Treo 600 among the nearly 90 vendors and 250 devices that boast inclusion of ACCESS’ state of the art browser technology.”

NetFront v3.0 is the latest version of the most widely deployed and actively used embedded Web browser in the world. NetFront is a modular, scalable, feature-rich, WAP 2.0-compliant embedded browser that supports a wide variety of non-PC Internet devices ranging from mobile phones and handhelds to automobile telematics systems. NetFront 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.

Treo 600 smartphones are available to Sprint customers both at Handspring.com and in Sprint retail and business channels nationwide. Support for other carrier partners will be announced within the next several weeks.

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 renders Web 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
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 mobile content delivery and access technologies for information appliances. ACCESS’ embedded NetFront® and Compact NetFront® browsers power 254 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 Sept, 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. NetFront is a registered trademark of NetFront Communications, Inc. in the United States and is used under license. i-mode is a registered trademark of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. Palm OS and Palm Powered are trademarks of PalmSource, a subsidiary of Palm, Inc. Tungsten are trademarks 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