Phoenix Expands Asia Pacific Channel Partner Network, Adds Six Distributors in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea

Business Wire, Dec 21, 2004

MILPITAS, Calif. and TAIPEI, Taiwan -- New Channel Partners Deliver Security and Recovery Applications To Meet Growing Customer Demand

Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq:PTEC) today announced that it has expanded its Asia Pacific (APAC) channel partner network by signing distribution agreements for its products with leading IT distributors in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. The new agreements include leading distributors DigitalChina Hong Kong in Hong Kong; Solomon and WeLink Solutions in Taiwan; and Sejoong Information Technology, Tech Business Land and Youlim C&C in Korea.

DigitalChina Hong Kong, Sejoong Information Technology, Tech Business Land and Youlim C&C will market and distribute Phoenix Technologies' FirstWare applications, while Solomon and WeLink Solutions will market and distribute the Phoenix Core System Software products, including FirstBIOS and TrustedCore, throughout the APAC region.

The new channel partnership agreements in these important Asian markets demonstrate continued rapid adoption of Phoenix's applications and Core System Software by the PC enhancement market and the embedded device market in Asia Pacific. They also provide Phoenix with increased distribution strength in Asia Pacific.

The new APAC channel partners will immediately begin shipping Phoenix Core System Software and FirstWare applications - including Phoenix FirstWare Recover Pro(TM), FirstWare Recover Pro Network, FirstWare Assistant(TM), cME Console(TM) and Vault (TM) - to their broad base of value-added resellers, device manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) throughout APAC. The Phoenix FirstWare products provide unprecedented security, recovery and management capabilities for device manufacturers, businesses and end users.

"Our new APAC partners all have a long-standing reputation for delivering exceptional products and service to their business and industrial customers, and Phoenix expects to enhance these partners' reputation by allowing them to deliver our innovative FirstWare applications that provide secure, always-available backup and recovery capabilities," said Steven Yang, Phoenix Technologies' Vice President and General Manager of APAC. "These new relationships allow us to expand our network and distribution channels to provide businesses and device manufacturers across the Asia Pacific region with our advanced, pre-OS instant-on and recovery applications for both PCs and digital devices. Through our solid after-market and channel revenue programs across APAC, Phoenix is able to help distributors deliver value that allows their customers to enable, protect and recover their PCs and digital devices."

"By adding the Phoenix FirstWare instant-on productivity, protection and recovery applications, DigitalChina Hong Kong will add diversity to our product lineup as well as deliver additional value to our customer base that will allow them to enable, protect and recover their PCs and digital devices," said Kenny Lo, General Manager of DigitalChina Hong Kong. "The Phoenix FirstWare product family provides us with the opportunity to deliver full system restoration - including the operating system, applications, user settings and all data files, all without a recovery CD. This is very important for our mobile customers and the manufacturers who are designing X86-based digital devices that must have built-in recovery to retrieve important data and settings, 24x7."

About Phoenix FirstWare Applications

Phoenix Technologies' FirstWare applications reduce manufacturing and support costs for OEMs, white box manufacturers, system builders, resellers and distributors while providing more user value. This added value is delivered through "instant-on" applications that diagnose, connect and recover systems without boot disks or recovery CDs if the OS will not boot. These applications include Phoenix FirstWare Recover, Recover Pro, Recover Pro Network, Vault, Connect, Check and FirstWare Assistant, which adds PDA functionality to laptops by providing instant pre-OS access to Microsoft Outlook e-mail and PIM data.

Viruses, worms and other infections continue to barrage PCs, yet 60 percent of all data still resides on the individual PC as opposed to the network. Also, mobile users and small and medium businesses typically don't have access to a dedicated IT staff, and are most susceptible to security breaches and infection.

Phoenix Recover Pro is the only pre-OS mode software bundle that gives PC users protection and recovery from viruses and intrusions. When users use Phoenix Recover Pro, they add the capability to perform regular, automated backups to incremental restore points. Restore points can be set monthly, weekly, daily or hourly. Users can automatically back up their PC operating system, applications, user settings and data files, and easily recover them in the event of an attack. There is no need to resort to IT support, training or an Internet connection for recovery assistance.

Phoenix FirstWare Recover Pro is the award-winning Phoenix Core Managed Environment (cME(TM))-certified application that allows PC and notebook users to restore their PCs to working order quickly and easily. By incorporating Phoenix Technologies' innovations into new PCs, users can restore entire approved corporate images, uncorrupted versions of user data, and even systems applications, to original factory settings - without using a boot disk, network connection or recovery CD.