Palm Brand Products to Feature Secure Digital Card Slot for Expansion

Business Wire, June 27, 2000

A Powerful Solution for Enterprise

By using SD Cards, enterprise IT organizations will be able to significantly ease deployment of mission-critical, secure enterprise databases or software upgrades to their mobile workers, and even leverage SD for data backup. The small size of the SD Card, combined with the operational advantages of sending end-users a plug-and-play solution will offer significant cost savings.

Companies will also be able to insert industry-specific SD solutions into the handhelds of their mobile workers. For example, workers could carry:

Healthcare: Mobile heart monitor, blood pressure monitor and on-the-spot insulin/glucose meter

Industry: Utility meter reader, vending machine transactor and barcode reader

Navigation/Location: GPS receiver and mapping device

Greater Flexibility, Solutions for Consumers

Consumers will be able to use SD for a myriad of applications, and SD's small size means that people will be able to carry several of these cards along with the product and plug-and play the various accessories as needed. In the future, this versatility may enable consumers to customize their handhelds with cards that add digital camera functionality, connectivity to HomeRF or Ethernet, or contain electronic books, maps or other reference materials or play MP3 files, or transfer them easily to other consumer electronics products. The SD Card is also ideally suited for Internet music players, cellular phones, smart phones, and car navigation systems.

Fellow SD supporters Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), SanDisk, Socket, Toshiba and Kodak all endorsed Palm's commitment to SD, citing examples of the kinds of cross-product functionality they will be able to offer consumers and businesses as the companies bring their planned SD-equipped products to market over the next year.

Palm will distribute enhanced software development kits, hardware development kits and developer support components, to simplify development for the SD Card among Palm's community of over 80,000 registered developers. Palm developers interested in supporting SD should register with Palm, and then watch the Palm developer newsletter for specific information on the availability of these kits.

For more information on SD Cards and the over 60 companies behind the industry initiative, please see the SD Association website at www.sdcard.org.

About Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc. is the leading provider of handheld computers (IDC personal companion devices category, 1999), including the Palm III, V and VII series of handheld computers. The Palm OS(R) platform is the foundation for the market-leading handheld computers from the company as well as products from its strategic partners such as IBM, QUALCOMM, Franklin Covey, Handspring and Symbol Technologies. Designed to support the increasingly mobile and geographically dispersed nature of information management, the company's handheld solutions allow people to carry their most critical information in their pockets. For more information, please visit www.palm.com.