VKB Joins Symbian Platinum Program to bring Virtual Keyboard Technology to Symbian OS Advanced Phones

Menlo Park, Calif. – May 10th, 2005 - VKB Inc, an intelligent optical interface and projection display technology company, announced today that it has joined the Symbian Platinum Program to support the growing market for smartphones based on Symbian OS™. As a Platinum Partner, VKB is extending its virtual keyboard technology to the Symbian ecosystem. Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the global industry standard operating system for smartphones, to the world's leading handset manufacturers, which account for over 80-percent of annual mobile phone sales worldwide.

The VKB technology provides an easy, intuitive way for users to input data and access the full functionality of increasingly advanced smartphones allowing Symbian OS to truly fly. By becoming a Symbian Platinum Partner, VKB ensures the close integration of its solutions (both embedded and licensed standalone accessory) with smartphones based on Symbian OS. The modular technology now looks set to be adopted and embedded by Symbian OS OEMs building on the success of the Bluetooth standalone accessory manufactured by i.Tech Dynamic Ltd (www.itechdynamic.com).

Symbian
“As Symbian OS phones become more popular and increasingly deployed into the mass market, users look for added functionality,” said Simon Garth, vice president, marketing, Symbian. The virtual keyboard is an innovative projection and detection system that complements Symbian OS smartphones very well, We are pleased to have VKB join the Symbian Platinum Program and bring its projection and detection technology to the Symbian ecosystem.” 

VKB
"This partnership reflects our commitment to build on our mobile strategy; to bring convenient data input capabilities to mobile users whilst continuing to allow the OEMs flexibility in product design," said Jonathan Curtiss, CEO of VKB. "By becoming a Symbian Platinum Partner, we can further expand the reach of our virtual keyboard and strengthen our relationships with users, application developers, smartphone manufacturers and carriers/network operators.” 

VKB's mission is to create a new generation of high-performance, low-cost virtual interface solutions across a wide range of applications in the communications, computing, medical, automotive, industrial, defense and digital entertainment markets. It has developed proprietary optical technology, received its first major patent and has further patents pending. The initial products, the Virtual Keyboard and Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard, provide superior data input solutions that significantly enhance the usefulness of many wireless communications and computing devices.

About Symbian Platinum Program

The Symbian Platinum Program includes companies that have a technology or strategic position that is key to the success of mobile computing technology surrounding Symbian OS. As part of the program, Platinum Partners benefit from a range of commercial services, including technical support and joint marketing opportunities as well as privileged access to Symbian OS source code and a dedicated Partner Support team.
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About VKB

Founded in 2000, VKB, Inc. is an intelligent optical interface and projection technology company. VKB ' s unique, patented and patent-pending optical technology uses simple, low-cost components. The first application of the technology, a virtual keyboard, was launched as a product in late 2004. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park , California , with research and development facilities in Israel.

About Symbian Ltd

Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the global open industry standard operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones.

Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading handset manufacturers. The following Symbian OS licensees have Symbian OS-based mobile phones in production and / or in development: Arima, BenQ, Fujitsu for NTT DoCoMo FOMA, LG, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. In 2004, over 14 million Symbian OS-based mobile phones were sold worldwide and more than 25 million have been sold to date.

Symbian has its headquarters in London , United Kingdom with offices in the United States, Europe, Israel, Australia and Asia ( Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo ).
Symbian
press@symbian.com

Media Enquiries

Catriona Harris PR@Vantage for VKB +1 415 984 1970 x118 charris@pr-vantage.com