Press Release

February 15, 2000

OTTAWA, Canada - 15 February 2000: Espial, the leading provider of embedded Java technology, today announced a new standard for web browsing technology for Internet appliances. Espial announced the availability of Escape 4.0 Professional edition, the first embedded device browser to deliver an Internet browsing experience equivalent to the PC desktop in less than an 800kb footprint. Escape 4.0 is targeted for Internet-enabled consumer products such as digital TV set-top boxes, networked game consoles, automotive computing, Internet screenphones, and wireless handhelds.

According to a recent report from International Data Corporation (IDC), the market for Internet appliances is positioned to explode, over the next several years. The future is much brighter than most have anticipated and will grow to become an annual 55 million unit market and $15 billion market by the year 2001, the report says.

"Escape 4.0 sets the new standard in web browsing technology for the smart device industry. Our browser will revolutionize the web-enabled device market by unlocking access to the entire Internet and the hottest e-commerce sites for the first time to consumer products ranging from digital TV to wireless smartphones and automobiles to intelligent kitchen appliances," said Mal Raddalgoda, senior director strategic of marketing for Espial. "With support for multimedia, security and the hottest web site technologies, Escape becomes the only choice for consumer products offering a media-rich experience with limited computing resources. We expect Escape 4.0 will become an infrastructure technology for next the wave of Internet growth — pervasive computing devices offering e-commerce and web services for anyone, from anywhere at anytime using any device".

"Espial is taking the leadership role in enabling powerful new applications for Java enabled consumer devices," says Reed Hornberger, Senior Director, Sun Microsystems, Sun Products and Platforms Division. "With an Internet browsing experience that is equivalent to desktop browsers in only 800 kilobytes of memory, Espial's Escape Java browser makes Java a very credible platform solution for consumer and embedded devices in the automotive, digital TV and wireless device markets."

The Ultimate Web Browser for Smart Devices

As a Java-based web browser offering "write once, run anywhere" capability, the Escape 4.0 browser is uniquely positioned as the only smart device browser that can deliver desktop browsing experiences to any smart device using any embedded operating system. This includes the leading device operating systems such as Microsoft WindowsCE, Linux, Symbian EPOC32, Wind River Systems VxWorks, QNX Software Systems Ltd. QNXOS, Microware OS-9, and Integrated Systems Inc. pSOS.

Escape 4.0 provides the ultimate browsing environment for smart devices. The new Espial Escape 4.0 Professional Edition architecture provides support of advanced features such as HTML 4.0, forms, frames, tables, applets, images, JavaScript 1.4, SSL v.2.0/3.0, DHTML, DOM, CSS, all in less than a 800kb footprint.

Escape 4.0 offers the most extensible plugin capability of any browser available on the market with support of OS native, applet and JMF browser plugins. Popular multimedia browser plugins, such as Real Networks G2 media player, Macromedia Flash, MP3, QuickTime, and MIDI can be supported by the Escape browser. Escape 4.0 integrates support for Sun Microsystems' JMF (Java Media Framework) for playing audio or visual media. In addition, the multimedia capabilities of the Escape 4.0 browser can be further extended through Java applets or Escape 4.0 plugins, thus enabling smart devices to be enhanced and extended on an ongoing basis in the field with upgrading to the operating system.

Extensive branding features and a full customization API allows OEM device manufacturers the ability to retain full control of the look and feel of the browser within the embedded device. Escape 4.0 delivers an advanced level of robustness and flexibility, offering organizations developing web-enabled Information appliances an immediate edge over their competition.

Pricing and Availability

A free download of the desktop version of the Escape 4.0 browser is available from the Espial web site at http://www.espial.com for Windows95/98/NT, Unix, Linux and Mac. The embedded version of Escape 4.0 Professional Edition for smart device OEMs is currently available. Contact Espial sales for OEM pricing.