AlphaCell Licenses Speech Technologies from ART

CANNES, FRANCE - AlphaCell, an Emblaze group company and provider of customized rich media mobile handsets, announces that it has signed a technology cooperation agreement with ART Advanced Recognition Technologies Inc., developer of Human Interface technologies. The agreement enables AlphaCell to port ART's speech and handwriting recognition technologies into its new generation of mobile handsets. ART's smARTspeak XG, an embedded, speaker independent name dialing solution, and ART's simpliWrite software will be ported to AlphaCell's M5 handset. The M5 is a fully customizable mobile handset, which will be unveiled at the 3GSM conference on 17 -21 February 2003. ART's speech and handwriting recognition technology gives users of AlphaCell's M5 handset greater flexibility in the way they can structure commands, for example "Call John Smith in his office" and "John Smith - office" both provide the same accurate response. ART's handwriting recognition technology, simpliWrite, is designed specifically to make text input fast, accurate and more user-friendly. The software identifies the users' own natural writing, freeing them from the need to learn and employ pre-determined letter-shapes. Tsion Gonen, VP of Marketing at AlphaCell said: "AlphaCell has built its reputation on high level cooperation and integration with application providers, mobile technology companies and back-end service providers - providing wireless carriers with platforms that increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), generate additional revenue streams and reduce churn. We are pleased to include ART as one of our newest partners. ART's superior solutions greatly enhance our commitment to providing best of breed technologies to our clients." Eran Aharonson, ART's President commented: "We are delighted to be associated with AlphaCell's pioneering products. AlphaCell represents one of the best advances in mobile technologies, and we're confident that its global customers will be delighted with the comprehensive range of speech and handwriting activating functionality that smARTspeak XG adds to the devices."