Zi adds 12th Korean licensee for eZiText(tm)
Calgary, AB (October 31, 2001) - Zi Corporation's (NASDAQ: ZICA) (TSE: ZIC)
eZiText(tm) has been licensed by Jung Science Information Technology,
bringing the number of Korean licensees of eZiText(tm) 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(tm). With our expertise
in 32 languages, we can also help these same manufacturers with their export
strategy to other markets."
Several eZiText(tm) 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(tm), in English,
Chinese and 18 other languages for use in all of their mobile phone
products. |
