Tegic Communications and Shintom Sign Global Licensing Agreement.Business Editors, Technology Writers SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2000 Shintom to Enable Easy Wireless Text Entry For Chinese and European Languages with T9(R) Text Input Software Tegic Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary Wholly Owned Subsidiary A subsidiary whose parent company owns 100% of its common stock. Notes: In other words, the parent company owns the company outright and there are no minority owners. of America Online See AOL. , Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange : AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. ), and Shintom Co. Ltd., announced today the companies have signed a global licensing agreement. The agreement allows Shintom to integrate Tegic's T9(R) Text Input software for Chinese and European languages into its next generation of wireless phones. Shintom plans to introduce its first phones with T9 Text Input for GSM networks in China and Europe by the third quarter of 2000. T9 Text Input enables the use of wireless communication services such as SMS (1) (Storage Management System) Software used to routinely back up and archive files. See HSM. (2) (Systems Management Server) Systems management software from Microsoft that runs on Windows NT Server. (short messaging See SMS. service), wireless Internet access See how to access the Internet. and wireless email Wireless Email or Push E-mail for enterprises is an email solution for small handheld platforms that is secure and managed centrally by enterprise server. Wireless technology adoption has seen a dramatic increase over the past few years. by making text input on a mobile phone quick and easy. "We are excited to work with Shintom to integrate T9 Text Input into their upcoming handsets," said Bob Hart, president and general manager of Tegic Communications. "By incorporating T9 Text Input, Shintom is making text messaging Sending short messages to a smartphone, pager, PDA or other handheld device. Text messaging implies sending short messages generally no more than a couple of hundred characters in length. on wireless phones a practical reality." "Our agreement with Tegic Communications gives us the ability to incorporate the industry's leading text entry solution into our next generation of wireless phones," said Mr. Hideo Kubota, president and representative director of Shintom Co. Ltd. "We want to make it easy for our customers to send and receive text messages from their phones." About T9 Text Input By incorporating T9 Text Input into mobile communications products, companies are solving the fundamental problem of how to quickly and easily type and send messages. Although each key on a telephone keypad can be interpreted in multiple ways - a single press on the "5" key could be "J," "K," or "L"-T9 Text Input uses an internal database to automatically scan possible variations to determine the correct word. For example, entering the word "call" into a mobile phone will take just four key presses with T9 Text Input rather than ten key presses required by conventional "multi-tap" text entry. More than 40 different consumer electronics devices including mobile phones, personal digital assistants and MP3 devices, have integrated T9 Text Input software. The software is available and in use in every major European and Asian language including Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean (Hangul), Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. Additional language support is continuously expanding. About Shintom Co. Ltd. Shintom was founded in 1955 to develop, manufacture and sell cellular phones, car audio products with cassette/CD and videocassette recorders, and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Tokyo Stock Exchange Main stock market of Japan, located in Tokyo. It opened in 1878 to provide a market for the trading of government bonds newly issued to former samurai. . Shintom owns and operates two factories: Yamagata factory in Japan (for cellular phones) and Batam factory in Indonesia (for other products). Shintom distributes its cellular phones worldwide through the sales network of Audiovox (USA company), which include GSM, PCS (1) (Personal Communications Services) Refers to wireless services that emerged after the U.S. government auctioned commercial licenses in 1994 and 1995. This radio spectrum in the 1. and Analog phones. Its head office is located in Yokohama, Japan. About Tegic Communications Tegic Communications was founded in 1995 to develop and market communication technologies for the telecommunications and computing industries and was acquired by America Online, Inc. (NYSE: AOL) in December 1999. Tegic Communications is headquartered in Seattle and has offices in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Tegic's flagship product is T9 Text Input, the leading alphabet-based and Chinese and Japanese character-based text input software. T9 Text Input technology has been licensed to major consumer electronics and communications equipment manufacturers representing more than 90 percent of annual wireless phone production worldwide. In addition to Shintom, current licensees include Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Benefon, Bosch, Denso, Fujitsu, LG Information & Communications, Maxon, Memory Corporation, Mitsubishi, NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. , NeoPoint, Optimay, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, Sagem, Samsung, Sanyo, Siemens, Sony, Telit and Voxson. The company has worldwide patents, both issued and pending, on T9 Text Input technology. For more information about Tegic Communications or T9 Text Input, call (206) 343-7001, send e-mail to info@tegic.com, or visit the Company's Web site at www.tegic.com. NOTE TO EDITORS: Tegic is a trademark and T9 is a registered trademark of Tegic Communications. All other trademarks or registered trademarks belong to their respective holders. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion