AMOISONIC DESIGNS GPRS PHONE W/ AGERE'S WIRELESS PLATFORM.

Amoisonic has chosen Agere Systems' new wireless platform reference design to develop advanced data and multimedia General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) mobile phones. Agere's platform is a complete hardware and software solution that offers reduced size, cost and power consumption, providing significant flexibility in phone design and fast time-to-market.

Amoisonic has selected this platform as the foundation for a new generation of data-enhanced GPRS phones targeting the China market. In addition, Amoisonic is introducing mobile phones in China that use field-proven Agere GPRS solutions. Based on the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications standard, GPRS-enabled phones offer features most in demand by consumers, including high-resolution color displays, multimedia messaging service (MMS), digital photo imaging, high-speed web browsing, polyphonic sound, and Java-based games.

"Amoisonic is serving the growing China market with mobile handsets that offer the latest multimedia technology available, and through Agere's platform, we will continue to develop high-performance, fully featured phones that push the boundaries of wireless data applications," said Li Xiaozhong, president of Amoisonic.

Amoisonic has also introduced its new line of color-screen mobile phones, including the A9, A90, F9 and F99 models, which incorporate Agere's GSM/GPRS chip sets. These tri-band Class 8 handsets can receive data at up to 50 kilobits per second, and offer phone enhancements such as dual LCD displays, data/fax capability, and wireless application protocol service, depending on model.

For its next-generation designs, Amoisonic will use Agere's new Sceptre PF7 wireless platform. This reference design delivers a complete board-level solution -- integrating Agere's Sceptre LF chipset (digital baseband, mixed signal and power management chips) with the radio, memory and associated components -- in one-third less space than Agere's previous generation GPRS platform. This hardware, along with Agere's broad range of software capabilities, protocol stack and development tools, comprise the heart of data-capable mobile phones and offer reduced size, power consumption and bill of materials. Handset manufacturers can take this reference design and develop a portfolio of products that provide their own customized look and feel to meet the growing demands for new features from operators and consumers.

"Agere's Sceptre PF7 is a complete mobile handset package that efficiently integrates chips and software, allowing wireless handset manufacturers to focus on differentiating their products through advanced features and industrial designs," said Luc Seraphin, vice president of Agere's Mobile Terminals division. "Agere and Amoisonic are developing mobile phones that bring together compact, high-performance GPRS platforms with the latest phone designs and functionality, delivering new levels of data services to wireless users."

The Sceptre PF7 platform offers a comprehensive software solution including:

-- Multimedia messaging service. Agere's platform supports MMS services, enabling mobile phones to send and receive messages with text, sounds and images. MMS is a presentation layer that leverages past developments made in areas like short messaging service (SMS) and enhanced messaging service (EMS) and allows standardized access to messages.

-- Packet broadcast control channel (PBCCH) functionality. PBCCH allows for better sharing of GSM and GPRS services for a network operator. With PBCCH, operators are not forced to use GSM channels to set up GPRS data calls, which inherently blocks other GSM calls in a cell, leading to a loss of potential voice revenue.

-- Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) service. The Sceptre PF7 platform supports the latest WAP version 2.0, giving wireless handsets access to information and interactive services using existing Internet technologies and protocols such as TCP/IP or HTTP. Content formats like XHTML, CHTML or WML as well as pictures in JPEG or GIF format provide a rich, colorful user experience.

-- Man-machine interface (MMI) support. Agere offers extensive upper-layer software support and interfacing tools that allow mobile phone makers to easily create the "look and feel" aspects of a phone in its design stage.

Agere's solution is specifically designed to deliver Class 10 GPRS mobile service -- the highest performance category currently supported by service providers, offering improved speed and network efficiency. Class 10 phones can manage a greater number of network timeslots, enabling data transfer speeds of up to 53.6 kilobits-per-second (Kbits/sec) in download and 26.8 Kbits/sec in upload. This capability can drive new data-intensive mobile phone features such as digital picture mail and e-commerce transactions. This platform is also equipped to support Class 12 service for future phone designs.

Agere is currently offering sample quantities of its Sceptre PF7 platform to customers.

Agere Systems is a provider of advanced integrated circuit solutions for wireless data, high-density storage and multiservice networking applications. Agere's wireless data portfolio enables seamless network access and Internet connectivity through industry-leading WiFi/802.11 solutions for wireless LANs and computing applications, as well as its GPRS offering for data- capable cellular phones. The company also provides custom and standard multi-service networking solutions, such as broadband Ethernet-over-SONET/SDH components and wireless infrastructure chips, to move information across metro, access and enterprise networks. Agere is a provider of integrated circuits such as read- channel chips, preamplifiers and system-on-a-chip solutions for high-density storage applications. Agere's customers include the leading PC manufacturers, wireless terminal providers, network equipment suppliers and hard-disk drive providers.

Agere Systems can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.agere.com/.

For more information, call 610/712-1747.