Franklin Takes Equity Stake in MobiPocket.com

Posted on October 19, 2001

Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc., developer of the eBookman reading devices, has taken an equity interest in MobiPocket.com S.A. of Paris, France. MobiPocket is a software and technology company that enables the reading and secured distribution of electronic text across OS platforms. As part of the equity transaction, Franklin has licensed certain linguistic ebook software technologies to MobiPocket for its use in software for reading ebooks on handhelds. Terms of the equity offering were not disclosed.

Barry J. Lipsky, president and chief executive officer of Franklin, said, ``Over the time we've been working with MobiPocket we've continued to find more and more synergy between our companies. This strategic investment will bring our cooperation closer. Several years ago Franklin starting embarking on a single data structure set for all platforms that we've been able to leverage in not only our own products but what we offer to the Palm OS and Pocket PC worlds. We found MobiPocket had also been embarking on a similar effort that had some added advantages. Today we bundle the MobiPocket Reader with our eBookman. Our cooperation is extending beyond their reader effort whereby we are already working more closely with the publishing community, web site development and dynamic delivery of data to vertical markets through MobiPocket's web companion. MobiPocket has a terrific development team that parallels our own and together combining our strengths will bring the solutions and wealth of content that the market is demanding.''

Prior to the equity transaction, MobiPocket and Franklin had partnered together to bring the MobiPocket Reader to Franklin's eBookMan platform. Using the MobiPocket Reader, eBookMan users have access to over 4000 ebook titles from mobipocket.com and franklin.com. The companies have also worked together over the past months to bring the MobiPocket Web Companion to eBookMan users, which allows access to online eNews/Periodicals and downloading of content for websites.