HP to Spur Growth in Mobility Market as Sponsor Board Member in Open Mobile Alliance; New Organization to Define Common Industry Standards for Seamless Interoperability

Business Wire, August 21, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 21, 2002

HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced its support of the new Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), which it has joined as a sponsor board member. The OMA, which was officially formed on June 10 and includes nearly 200 companies in the wireless industry, combines the efforts of the Open Mobile Architecture initiative and the WAP Forum into a single standards body that plans to streamline the adoption of open, common mobility specifications.

Through such industry standards -- and the resulting interoperability across products and vendors, OMA plans to accelerate the delivery of innovative mobile services that provide consumers and business users with a seamless and productive wireless experience.

As a sponsor board member, HP plans to aggressively drive toward OMA goals, while working with other OMA members in key industry segments, such as mobile operators, wireless vendors, IT vendors and content providers.

"The OMA is the right idea at the right time. We can give consumers a seamless wireless experience -- and grow our market faster -- by simplifying what is now complex, by eliminating barriers and by moving forward with standards-based building blocks," said Sebastiano Tevarotto, vice president and general manager, HP Network and Service Provider Business Unit. "Open, common standards are a cornerstone of HP's business and we will aggressively support the OMA agenda."

HP's own mobility initiatives are fully aligned with OMA objectives. The company's mobile service delivery platform is an open framework that embraces network infrastructure, middleware, portal and management services -- and third party applications. It is designed to enable service providers to efficiently build and deploy new convergent services that are open, scalable and reliable.

HP's mobile service delivery platform will closely follow all OMA specifications.

More information on the OMA is available at http://www.openmobilealliance.org.

About HP

HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP completed its merger transaction involving Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. The company would have had revenue on a combined company basis with Compaq of approximately $81.1 billion in fiscal 2001 and has operations in more than 160 countries. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to, HP's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2002 and reports filed subsequent to HP's annual report on Form 10-K, as amended on January 30, 2002, for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2001. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HP's results could differ materially from HP's expectations in these statements. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.