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Sensoria and Hitachi Semiconductor America to Market the First Turnkey Telematics Platform to the Automotive Industry
mGate Development Platform Includes Gateway Hardware Configured With Peripherals, Operating System, Middleware And APIs
DETROIT--(AutomotiveWire)--March 5, 2002-- Sensoria Corp., a leader in wireless and wire-line connectivity solutions, and Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc., a leading provider for automotive semiconductor solutions, today announced that the two companies will jointly market the mGate Development Platform, an open in-vehicle telematics platform based on Hitachi's SuperH® RISC architecture.

As a result, Hitachi Semiconductor (America) will add mGate to its development portfolio, making sure that OEMs can benefit from the industry's first open platform for developing next-generation in-vehicle computing services. Both companies are jointly demonstrating mGate at the SAE Digital Car Conference in Detroit March 4 to 7, 2002.

The mGate Development Platform adds to Hitachi's line of development systems for Car Infotainment Systems and telematics applications. Hitachi's SH-4 processor provides the high processing power needed to host next-generation telematics applications such as voice recognition, text-to-speech, navigation, media players, remote Web services and mobile workforce productivity in addition to traditional safety and security applications. The mGate platform comes with built-in GPS receiver, cellular phone, vehicle bus interface, mass storage and wireless LAN functionality. Supporting a robust programming environment is a high performance embedded Linux operating system with drivers and APIs for telematics related peripherals such as the vehicle bus, GPS, and cellular modem. A Java Virtual Machine is included for development of Java-based applications. The mGate Development Platform comes complete with development tools, APIs, and remote software management framework.

``The mGate Development Platform is a fully-integrated development environment that reduces development risk and allows extensive code re-use so that OEM and Tier 1 telematics projects progress smoothly from proto-type to pilot to actual deployment,'' explained Brian Davis, vice president of marketing for Sensoria Corp. ``Hitachi's support of the mGate platform opens up access to organizations that are ready to take next-generation functionality to production.''

``With a solid product roadmap and diverse third-party support for development tools, the combination of mGate and Hitachi's SH-4 processor offers seamless solutions for developing telematics and car infotainment applications,'' said Tatsuo Yamamoto, vice president of CIS/telematics Business Unit at Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. ``With Hitachi offering the mGate development platform, automakers and Tier 1 suppliers can focus on their core competencies -- such as developing automotive applications, integrating services into the vehicle and taking care of drivers.''

Developers evaluating between coding applications in Java or in the machine's native code are often limited to one or the other based on the platform capabilities. The mGate Development Platform supports APIs and software management frameworks for both Java/OSGi and C Code application implementations. This allows the developer to decide the best language for the application.

Sensoria has developed several partnerships with innovative value-added application providers who have ported to the mGate including ALK Technologies Inc., CustomWeather, Destiny Media Technologies Inc., Fonix Corp., Go2 Systems Inc., MechanicNet Group, Mobility Technologies Inc., ScreamingMedia Inc., SportsTicker, WCITIES and Webraska.

About Sensoria Corp.

Sensoria Corp. is a leader in wireless and wire-line connectivity solutions that network the systems embedded in vehicles, homes and industry with the Internet. Sensoria's technology enables access to advanced telematics, telemetry and location-based services from the car, workplace or home. Founded in 1998, Sensoria Corp. is a private company based in San Diego. For more information, visit www.sensoria.com or call 858/673-4460 ext. 11.

About Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc.

Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc., a subsidiary of Hitachi America Ltd., supports the requirements of the North American marketplace with a broad range of standard and low-power semiconductor solutions. Offering some of the industry's most popular semiconductor solutions, including flash memory chips, flash cards, and other memory devices, plus microcontrollers, microprocessors and much more, Hitachi provides chips to the world's leading device manufacturers within industrial, consumer and emerging market applications. Hitachi's substantial design engineering and research and development facilities in the United States help bring the world's best technology to U.S. customers. For more information, visit: www.hitachi.com/semiconductor.

Hitachi America Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT - news), markets and manufactures a broad range of electronics, computer systems and products, consumer electronics and semiconductors, and provides industrial equipment and services throughout North America. For more information, visit: www.hitachi.com.

Hitachi Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2000 (ended March 31, 2001) consolidated sales of 8,417 billion yen ($67.9 billion(1)) The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.