News release |
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Zi adds 12th Korean licensee for eZiText™
Calgary, AB (October 31, 2001) - Zi Corporation's (NASDAQ: ZICA) (TSE: ZIC) eZiText™ has been licensed by Jung Science Information Technology, bringing the number of Korean licensees of eZiText™ to 12 manufacturers. With a total of 32 OEM licensees based in China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan, Zi is well positioned to address the steadily growing mobile market in Asia and the increasing trend of handset developers outsourcing their production to Asian manufacturers.
In China, Zi has licensing agreements with eight of the ten manufacturers designated by the State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) for GSM handset production. Nineteen manufacturers have been designated by the SDPC in China for the production of CDMA (code division multiple access) handsets. Zi Corporation has licensing agreements with eleven of these nineteen manufacturers. It is estimated that China is the largest mobile market in the world with over 125 million mobile subscribers reported in at the end of August 2001.
"We expect that China will lead the world in handset sales in the coming years, driven by increasing penetration rates and technical innovations like CDMA development. At the end of August, mobile penetration in China was 9.2 per cent compared to the 40 to 50 per cent penetration in Europe and the United States," says Gary Mendel, vice president, Sales and Marketing, Zi Corporation. "Furthermore, we are situated to benefit from the increased demand for CDMA handsets that is anticipated in coming quarters with the development of China Unicom's CDMA network and our dominant position in Chinese text entry software has many vendors who are interested in entering the Chinese market coming to us to license eZiText™. With our expertise in 32 languages, we can also help these same manufacturers with their export strategy to other markets."
Several eZiText™ implementations on the CDMA platform are planned to coincide with manufacturers aiming to supply handsets to CDMA subscribers in China. By the year 2005, the Yankee group estimates that China will be the largest CDMA market with over 55 million subscribers.
Established in 1999, Jung Science Information Technology is a private Korean company that specializes in the design and production of telecommunication equipment including CDMA handsets. Jung Science Information Technology has licensed Zi's predictive text input software,
eZiText™, in English, Chinese and 18 other languages for use in all of their mobile phone products.
Zi Corporation is a market-driven technology company delivering intelligent interface solutions to enhance the user experience of wireless and consumer technologies. The company's core technology product, eZiText™ connects people to short messaging, e-mail, e-commerce, Web browsing and similar applications in almost any written language. Zi Services provides market-leading engineering design in Bluetooth, VoIP and man-machine interface. Zi supports its strategic partners from offices in Calgary, Beijing, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Shenzhen, Stockholm and Tokyo. A publicly traded company, Zi Corporation is listed on the NASDAQ National Market (ZICA) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (ZIC).
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For more information:
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Dale Kearns Zi Corporation Chief Financial Officer Phone: 403 233 8875 investor@zicorp.com www.zicorp.com |