Dejima Inc. - Press Releases - February 20, 2003

Orange to leverage Platform's ease of use benefit to multiply person-to-application SMS traffic

Cannes, France, February 20, 2003 - Orange France (http://www.orange.com/), a leading wireless operator, and Dejima, Inc. (http://www.dejima.com/index.html), a developer of mobile access solutions, today announced that Orange France has selected Dejima Direct™ Mobile Messaging solutions to power SMS applications. The agreement will deliver the world's first free-form access solution to advanced messaging applications.

Orange will release Dejima Direct™-enabled applications over the next few months in France. Upon release, Orange subscribers will be able to experience the power of Dejima Direct™ Mobile Messaging, a carrier-grade suite of products, that enables mobile operators and service providers to eliminate the need for keywords, short codes and menus. With Dejima Direct™, end-users can send SMS requests to applications using their own abbreviations, colloquialisms, slang, SMS speak - whatever comes naturally. Dejima Direct Mobile Messaging interprets the request, retrieves the information or executes the transaction, and delivers the result back to the user as a reply to his/her initial request. Such ease of use results in increased service traffic and service stickiness, equating to greater revenue for Dejima licensees.

"SMS-to-application services come with high profit margins based on what users are willing to pay", said Steve McClure, a research vice president at IDC's Software Research Group. "The problem here, though, is that the user interface to many of these applications is cumbersome and complex. Short codes are the best that operators have come up with, but trying to remember dozens of three-letter codes to gain access has severely restricted adoption. Dejima Direct Mobile Messaging allows users to ask for information in common everyday language, eliminating the need for short codes."

Orange and Dejima have worked to enable Direct Access to Orange's full range of messaging services, including national news, financial news, sports news, weather information, restaurant search, entertainment and horoscope, etc. These services are accessible in a single step via mobile messaging. Users are able to send SMS queries such as "rugby results", "jazz 2nite in paris", "weather tomorrow in Cannes", "last lottery results" and much more, to a short number, and directly receive SMS answers on their cell phones.

"SMS is a chat media, now we enable chatting with applications", said Julien Billot, director of marketing at Orange France. "In a pilot conducted last year, Dejima Direct generated increased SMS traffic to a test application, and fast adoption of free text queries by end users. People need easy access to information. There is no better way than providing them with the opportunity to do that in their own words, and free them from memorizing codes."

"Orange is a leader in innovative marketing", said Pierre Vilpoux, vice president and general manager European operations at Dejima. "By launching the world's first Direct SMS Access applications, Orange and Dejima are aiming at fundamentally changing the way mobile subscribers access and use data services. We know that complexity impairs usage. It is time to focus on usability, so that we can drive usage, and drive revenue".

Dejima Direct Mobile Messaging handles multiple modalities, including SMS, Instant Messaging and MMS. With the advent of MMS, Dejima Direct provides access to richer content faster, bypassing cumbersome searches and menu-based navigations. The platform is also language independent: existing Dejima Direct implementations include applications in English, French, Finnish, Japanese and Chinese.

About Dejima
Dejima delivers revolutionary software solutions that enable people to interact with computerized content using their own words - freed from menus. By empowering users to get what they need with ease - when, how, and where they want it - Dejima Direct interaction solutions uniquely stimulate the use of corporate data assets and consumer services, while boosting both their revenue potential and economic value. Founded in 1998, Dejima is headquartered in San Jose, California, and operates subsidiaries in London and Tokyo. Dejima is privately funded, and backed by companies such as InfoSpace, Mitsubishi Corporation, Omron, Research In Motion (RIM) and Sonera. For more information, visit the Dejima Web site: http://www.dejima.com/index.html