HighPoint Systems and Philips Partner on Soon-to-Be-Unveiled E-Commerce Appliances - Brief Article

Information Superhighways Newsletter, April, 2001

HighPoint Systems Inc., a provider of infrastructure software that enables e-commerce across multiple touch points, announced a partnership with Philips Remote Control Systems (RCS), a division of Royal Philips Electronics.

The partnership allows Philips RCS license to HighPoint's proprietary intellectual property and patents in support of its e-commerce appliance strategy.

Under this license, Philips RCS plans to announce its first kitchen-based handheld e-commerce appliance in early 2001.

The partnership agreement also allows both companies to co-market the first Philips-branded device, the HS 4000, to grocery and other retailers.

Philips RCS is expanding its focus to wireless input and control devices designed to make consumers' lives easier. The entertainment market is becoming more complex. As a result, users have been forced to manage and control multiple devices in order to leverage the proliferation of available content and services. This evolution is prompting Phillips RCS to extend its reach into solutions that simplify this complexity and make today's consumer experience as easy as using a remote control.

The soon-to-be released HighPoint/Philips RCS home shopping appliance ensures that the customer shopping experience is enjoyable, easy, and efficient. Key features include bar code scanning, a touch screen display, and database synchronization technology.

For example, consumers will be able to scan product bar codes quickly and easily, adding items to their shopping lists in seconds, while ensuring accuracy amidst a wide variety of product choices. Users will be able to create, store, and recall a personal list with frequently-purchased items.

Using the HighPoint/Philips RCS solution, retailers are able to quickly build profitable home shopping businesses fully customized to the overall look of their branding. The HighPoint/Philips RCS approach supports multiple distribution centers (warehouses or stores), each with its own set of products and prices, and includes a powerful, per-product pricing model by store, warehouse, delivery zone, or any group of location codes.

HighPoint's applications leverage open technology standards to ensure scalability, richness, and extensibility. The n-tiered architecture of its e-commerce system is modular and portable. The system's turnkey solution minimizes a merchant's time-to-market and provides HighPoint with a critical competitive advantage over many alternative products which require extensive custom programming prior to deployment.

HighPoint products and services are used by a variety of businesses throughout the world including H-E-B Grocery Company of San Antonio, TX, the twelfth largest grocery retailer in the US, and Scotty's Home Market, a Peapod company, serving the Chicago market.