Access Supplying Software to China

Japan's Access Co. says that seven mobile phone manufacturers including Sanyo, Motorola, Hisense and Haier, launched sales in China this month of handsets embedded with its multimedia messaging software. The mobile phones feature multimedia mail service (U-Mail) running on CDMA 2000 1X network (U-Max) provided by China Unicom.

License contracts for the software were concluded between Access' subsidiary in China, and 18 mobile phone manufacturers based on a cooperative agreement signed between China Unicom and Access in August last year.

From May 2003 onwards, additional manufacturers will launch sales of handsets with Access multimedia messaging software embedded in units.

Access' M-IMAP technology is based on the widely adopted IMAP4/SMTP protocol but has been fully optimized for the mobile network. M-IMAP technology is compatible with Internet e-mail, therefore fully interoperable with PC and Internet-based e-mails, without any protocol translation. Besides its full-scale e-mail functionality, M-IMAP is very easy to use and it allows multiple attachments of up to 100K each. To meet specific market requirements and China Unicom's network, Access provided further functionality enhancements and technology innovation, for example M-IMAP has been extended to natively support SMIL content, making it fully interoperable with MMS.

"We are very pleased that mobile phones embedded with our multimedia messaging software will be launched in the Chinese market, the development of which was based on our cooperative agreement with China Unicom. We believe that the multifunction e-mail features for mobile phones, widely used in Japan and Europe, will also be accepted in the Chinese market and that it will become indispensable to the lifestyle of end-users in China," said Toru Arakawa, president and chief executive officer of Access Co."

Posted to the site on 29th April 2003