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Zi CORPORATION
NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release (Calgary,
AB Canada)
February 15, 2000
Zi and Symbian partner to expand marketing and engineering
reach
Santa Clara, CA (Feb. 15, 2000) - Zi Corporation (NASDAQ:
ZICA) (TSE: ZIC) today announced it has partnered with Symbian
to extend the development of a wide range of smartphones and
communicators. Zi’s experience and dominant position
in Asia as well as engineering expertise with the Symbian platform
prompted Zi’s selection for the Symbian Competence Center
program.
“We are one of the few companies that have placed software
applications on the Symbian platform and this partnership is
a natural extension of our existing work,” says Roland
Williams, senior vice president, Technology Solutions, Zi Corporation.
“Zi’s development centers in Beijing and Calgary
and international technical support centers allow us to integrate
and support Symbian with high-level resources in the world’s
main markets.” The global wireless market is expected
to reach one billion subscribers by 2003 according to research
provided by the Strategis Group.
Zi will support Symbian’s licensees, engineer wireless
Internet applications based on the Symbian platform and provide
Asian exposure to EPOC in addition to providing a mix of business
development, engineering and project management skills to Symbian’s
licensees. Symbian is partnering with ARM, Cadence,
Vanteon, Omron, Teleca, Kanri Kogaku Kenkyusho, ENEA Data, Digia,
Phoenix and Zi Corporation to develop new products for the wireless
Internet device market.
“We are working with skilled, experienced companies to
provide innovative technology and application solutions for
the next generation of wireless devices. With its prominence
in the Asian market and experienced international engineering
and design team, Zi is well positioned to add significant value
to our licensees targeting the Asian markets,” says Juha
Christensen, executive vice president, Symbian.
Symbian owns, licenses, develops and supports leading software,
user interfaces, application frameworks and development tools
for wireless information devices such as communicators and smartphones.
Symbian aims to promote standards for the interoperability of
wireless information devices with wireless networks, content
services and messaging and enterprise wide solutions.
With headquarters in London, Symbian has offices in Tokyo and
Kanazawa, Japan; Ronnenby, Sweden; Cambridge, UK and San Francisco
Bay Area, USA. Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Matsushita,
Motorola, Nokia and Psion.
Zi Corporation is a leading provider of embedded software technology
and educational products. The company’s eZiText™
input software is licensed in numerous languages for information
and Internet appliances such as mobile phones, PDAs and TV set-top
boxes. Zi’s common shares trade on both the Toronto
Stock Exchange (ZIC) and the NASDAQ stock market (ZICA).
Zi markets its technology through strategic partnerships worldwide
from offices in Calgary, Beijing, Hong Kong, Stockholm and San
Francisco.
Certain statements in this press release constitute
forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The information in
this press release is based on Zi Corporation’s current
expectation and assumptions, and is subject to a number of risks
and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those anticipated. Such risks include,
among others, general business and economic conditions and competitive
actions as well as the risks and uncertainties referred to in
Zi Corporation’s 20-F for the most recent calendar year.
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