Immersion Demonstrates the Future of Mobile User Experience at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital Conference

Business Wire, May 28, 2009

TouchSense® Technology Makes Virtual Keyboards Feel Like Mechanical Keyboards; Immersive Messaging™ Combines Haptics and Gesture for Entirely New Means of Digital Interpersonal Communication

SAN JOSE, Calif. & CARLSBAD, Calif. -- At The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering of the leaders of the digital revolution, Immersion Corporation (NASDAQ:IMMR), the leading developer and licensor of haptic (touch feedback) technology, unveiled two new concepts for next-generation digital user interfaces based on patented multi-modal haptic and gestural technology. Immersion is one of a select group of companies chosen to demonstrate new innovations at the annual event.

On stage with Wall Street Journal columnists and All Things Digital executive editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Immersion showed how TouchSense technology transforms touchscreen keyboards into ones that feel like physical keyboards and work as effectively, and demonstrated for the first time a new form of digital interpersonal communication called Immersive Messaging.

Designed to make mobile communications more personal, natural and fun, Immersive Messaging is an experience that enables people to share emotions, thoughts, ideas and short pieces of information in real time through physical senses rather than simple text, using a shared physical space on their mobile device. A video demonstration of Immersive Messaging is available at http://www.immersion.com/immersive-messaging.html.

“Touch technology is the future of user experience for digital devices. By combining our proven haptics with advanced gestural technology, we are significantly advancing usability for all kinds of consumer electronics products, especially mobile phones and other portables,” said Clent Richardson, chief executive officer of Immersion. “We’re turning the science of haptics and gesture into revolutionary solutions for our partners and for consumers. The concepts we unveiled here today not only address fundamental challenges device makers face, but also point to an inevitable shift toward more natural, intimate and amusing digital connections to the people in our lives. Through our technology, our device partners can delight people in completely new and very personal ways.”

TouchSense technology for touchscreen keyboards and Immersive Messaging are both first-of-their-kind exploratory concepts based on technology under development at Immersion, soon to be available for license and productization by operators, device makers and software developers.

New TouchSense Technology for Touchscreen Keyboards

Embedded in over 40 million phones, Immersion’s TouchSense solutions have been improving mobile touchscreen devices for the top three leading phone manufacturers -- LG, Samsung and Nokia -- with the first handset shipping just over four years ago. At the conference, Immersion demonstrated a new prototype to address a pervasive problem of keyboard typing on touchscreen phones. According to research published by the Association for Computing Machinery and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, current touchscreen keyboards are not as efficient as mechanical keyboards. In tests conducted to compare usage of touchscreen keyboards to their physical counterparts and to determine the impact of digital haptics on touchscreen typing, touch feedback proved to make typing more accurate and more efficient than typing with only visual and audio cues. Multi-modal feedback including the sensation of touch proved to significantly increase speed and reduce error rates for touchscreen typing.

The new TouchSense capabilities allow users to distinguish between keys through the sense of touch, and feel button press confirmations as keys are typed. These effects can be felt while typing with two fingers at a time. Especially when combined with visual and audio cues, Immersion TouchSense technology delivers a tactile keyboard experience like no other solution to date.

Immersive Messaging™

Immersive Messaging enables people to share emotions, thoughts, ideas and short pieces of information in real-time through physical senses rather than simple text, within a Shared Space on their mobile phone, using what Immersion and others call hapticons. The result is an entirely new means of digital communication. Immersion partners can use the technology, combining elements of TouchSense and gestural technology, to deliver new services that enable people to connect with one another remotely using natural spatial gestures and other non-verbal forms of communication.

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