Sumitomo, Internet Initiative Japan and Xing Technology Corp. establish joint venture in Japan; Sumitomo Corp. and Internet Initiative Japan Purchase 50 Percent Share of Xing Japan

Business Wire, March 13, 1996

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 1996-- Sumitomo, Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) and Xing Technology Corp. Wednesday announced a joint venture in Japan that will broaden distribution of Xing's Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) based products, including StreamWorks.

The agreement includes an initial input of $2 million. The new company, which is expected to be named Xing Japan, will be an exclusive distributor for Xing products within the Japanese market.

Sumitomo and IIJ will assume the increased shares of Xing Technology Corp. "The increased financial investment by Sumitomo and Internet Initiative Japan signals a desire by Xing Technology and our Japanese alliance partners to forge strategic, long-term relationships that will optimally serve the needs of Internet broadcasting customers in Japan," said Howard Gordon, founder and president of Xing Technology.

"Investment and the powerful and long-term relationship with Xing will develop the Japanese and pan-Asian market for Internet broadcasting and its related services, which could lead to the acceleration and proliferation of a multi-media network," said Isao Momota, deputy general manager of Information and Telecommunications, Sumitomo Corp. business department.

StreamWorks, Xing's media distribution technology, enables content providers to broadcast live and on-demand audio and video over the Internet, LANs and WANs. Optimized for live transmission, the media delivery is in real time, and there is no wait to download files. Using an innovative compression algorithm that takes advantage of existing international MPEG standards and TCP/IP protocols, StreamWorks delivers audio and video more quickly and clearly than any other product on the market. With an ISDN line (128 kbps), StreamWorks delivers 25-30 frames per second of video and high quality audio. Network congestion is controlled by on-the-fly bitrate reduction of data streams.

Xing's StreamWorks media distribution technology has already been successfully used by numerous Japanese broadcasting and media interests in the past year, including the 1995 Asian Pacific Economic Conference in Osaka; a Ryuichi Sakamoto music concert; "The Future of Hope" conference sponsored by the Elie Wiesel Foundation; and Kansai Television's International Women's Marathon.

Sumitomo is one of the world's leading integrated companies, trading and distributing commodities and products worldwide to businesses and consumers, and investing in ventures which promote the global flow of trade and technology as well as the service businesses and other industries of the future. Recently Sumitomo has aggressively developed the Internet infrastructure, such as the pan-Asia consortium to build the Internet backbone network, and has invested in over 30 cable TV stations whose network can function as a large-capacity Internet backbone in the future.

IIJ is a trailblazer in providing commercial Internet service in Japan, and is maintaining its leading position by providing constituent technology, backbone network service, equipment plant, and service menus. The company has some 130 employees in three offices and six subsidiary companies in Japan.

Xing Technology, based in Arroyo Grande, provides international MPEG standards-based, scalable, cross-platform media distribution solutions for live and on-demand audio and video transmission. The company sells its audio and video broadcast compression software worldwide. Xing can be contacted at its World Wide Web site: www.xingtech.com.

CONTACT: Xing Technology Corp.

Peggy Tayloe, 805/473-0145

or

Rogers & Cowan

Sallie Olmsted/Matthew Michelson, 310/201-8817/8847