"Cisco Systems joins the many industry leaders who have licensed a font rendering solution from Bitstream," said Anna Chagnon, CEO of Bitstream. "In systems where memory and performance are at a premium, fast and high-quality text rendering is a must. Our partners confirm that Font Fusion delivers the highest-quality text at any resolution and on any device. We are honored that Cisco Systems has selected Font Fusion for its IP telephony solutions."

Cisco is also licensing a suite of international fonts from Bitstream, as well as Bitstream's stroke-based font technology.

Bitstream's stroke-based fonts are extremely compact, high-quality Asian fonts for embedded systems. These fonts enable developers to keep storage and memory requirements to a minimum. For example, a Traditional Chinese font in this format includes over 13,000 characters in less than 500 KB. Developers do not have to dedicate a large amount of ROM space to store a stroke-based font, nor do they have to use a lot of memory to display it.

Cisco will also license Bitstream's unified stroke-based font, which includes all the characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) languages. Developers can tailor the unified, stroke-based font for applications and environments. In a standard Unicode CJK font, there are frequently Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters in the same Unicode position, and these characters may have subtle or pronounced design differences. For these situations, developers using this font can choose which language to use as the default for characters at each Unicode position. A unified font thus allows developers to customize their solutions without making compromises, so they can use one font for all their products.

About

Font Fusion
Font Fusion provides developers with full font fidelity and high-quality typographic output at any resolution on any device, while maintaining the integrity of the original character shapes. Font Fusion is small and fast. Most developers can compile the source code in 32-105 KB, depending on options. It generates more than 16,000 characters per second, using the Arial font at 25 lines per em on a 233MHz Pentium II processor, cache turned off.

Font Fusion performs well in memory- and performance-constrained environments. For example, a complete traditional Chinese TrueType font with over 13,000 characters can occupy as much as 8MB. With Font Fusion, the same characters occupy less than 0.5MB, representing considerable savings in memory and disk space costs.

Font Fusion is designed for operating systems, software applications, Web applications, low-resolution screen devices, multimedia servers, high-definition television screens (HDTVs), set-top boxes, continuous tone printers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other embedded systems and information and wireless appliances.

Bitstream Inc.
Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ: BITS)is a software development company that focuses on the presentation of data. Bitstream enables customers worldwide to render high-quality text, browse the Web on wireless devices, select from the largest collection of fonts online, and customize documents over the Internet. Its core competencies include font technology, browsing technology, e-commerce technology, and publishing technology. Bitstream's offering is made up of four distinct product lines:

Type and Technology
Bitstream is a leading developer of font technology, digital fonts, and custom font designs. Bitstream licenses its TrueDoc and Font Fusion technologies to Web and application developers, and to manufacturers of information appliances, wireless and handheld devices, set-top boxes, embedded systems, and printers.

ThunderHawk
ThunderHawk is a client-server technology that brings full-featured wireless Web browsing to mobile devices. It gives customers complete Internet access to real Web pages while maintaining full text legibility. Now in alpha release, ThunderHawk Smartphone Edition enables consumers to browse the Web on smart phones. ThunderHawk Pocket PC Edition allows consumers to browse the Web on Pocket PC devices. ThunderHawk Enterprise Server is a client-server technology for corporations and telecommunications companies. Providing wireless Web browsing across networks, it gives a mobile workforce complete access to Internet and corporate intranet Web pages.

MyFonts.com
MyFonts.com is a showcase of the world's fonts available from one easy-to-use Web site. It provides the largest collection of fonts ever assembled for on-line delivery, and offers easy ways to find and purchase fonts on-line. MyFonts.com also offers unique typographic resources and forums for interacting with font experts. For details, visit http://www.myfonts.com , the Web site for finding, trying, and buying fonts on line.

Pageflex
Pageflex technologies have pioneered a new direction in composition software: Web-top publishing. Web-top publishing software helps novice users create high-quality printed products using intelligent, flexible templates, without installing or learning any new desktop publishing software. Pageflex templates are intelligent and flexible because professional designers can set rules to define which elements can change, how much they can change, and who can change them. Pageflex products thus maintain corporate identity and design integrity while enabling sophisticated customizing of documents.

Bitstream was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Find out more about Bitstream at http://www.bitstream.com .

Bitstream, Font Fusion, and TrueDoc are registered trademarks, and the Bitstream logo and ThunderHawk are trademarks, of Bitstream Inc. MyFonts.com is a trademark of MyFonts.com, Inc. Pageflex and Mpower are trademarks of Pageflex. Other technologies and brand names are used for information only and remain trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Anna Chagnon
CEO
Bitstream Inc.
617.520.8619