Press Release

December 09, 1999

OTTAWA, Canada - 9 December, 1998: Espial Group Inc. today announced the release of Espial Escape v1.2, a web browser designed for the emerging needs of network consumer and industrial electronic devices. Espial Escape is a full-featured, high performance, pure Java web browser with a core footprint of less than 120K. This web browser has been developed for restricted memory, low storage space and diverse visual display environments. Espial Escape boasts full support for HTML 3.2, forms, frames, tables, applets, animated gifs and zooms for diverse visual displays.

"Espial Escape is what device manufacturers have demanded for quite sometime now. Espial Escape exceeds their demands by providing a total browsing solution for Internet appliances," said Jaison Dolvane, president of Espial Group Inc. "Espial Escape further provides the ultimate browser operating environment for electronic devices within a distributed environment. Extensive branding features and a simple customization API, allow device manufacturers to retain full control of the look and feel of their device."

"IDC predicts 42 million Internet devices to be shipping by the year 2001 and a web browser will be an essential tool for these devices. Espial Group is committed to supporting standards and will continue to provide device manufacturers with best-in-class browsing capabilities for networked electronic devices." Future versions of Espial Escape will add support for HTML4.0, XML, JavaScript, SSL and other security features.

Espial Escape v1.2, specifically developed to meet the needs of minimal resource environments is ideal for use in Internet devices like PDAs, smart phones, set-top boxes, network computers, hand-held and other mobile electronic devices. The corporate mobile and hand-held device is emerging fast and Espial Escape now provides manufacturers a significant time-to-market advantage in deploying devices that target the various vertical markets including medical, courier, real estate, retail and sales force automation.