Tokyo, Japan, October 5th 2001:- The Open Contents Platform Association (OCPA, http://www.ocpa.jp/) held its first General Assembly on October 5 and officially launched its activities.

The OCPA had been preparing its formal establishment over the last three months with the aim of constructing and promoting the open platform where contents and applications can be distributed freely and openly across networks. As a result of these efforts, the OCPA has had extremely strong support for its objectives, not only from hardware manufacturers and software vendors, but also from various related sectors like ASPs, contents providers, and carriers. Even at the time of today's meeting, the OCPA has 51 member companies.

The OCPA has begun by setting up both a Technical Committee and a Promotional Committee to publicly promote its open platform. The first phase activities will include specifying and publishing various specifications through the OCPA Working Groups, participating in various events, and holding seminars.

The OCPA's basic policy is to provide an open discussion forum for its open platform that any organization can join. It will continuously drive to attract a wide range of representatives from various business sectors to join and participate in the OCPA aiming to further its open environment.


Mr. Yoshio Mohri, the President & CEO, Fujitsu Prime Software Technologies Ltd. said, "Standardization of software and binary compatibility are challenging issues though the unification of OCPA members brings the answer. I am delighted that PST is going to contribute through the OCPA its part in the acceleration of premium software distribution."


Mr. Hajime Kimura, Manager, Marketing Division, Communication System Group, Kyocera Corporation, "In mobile communications the market is changing from hardware to software-oriented, which is exemplified by the proliferation of internet-connected cellular phones. To recognize this trend, it is very important to develop a platform where various applications and services are both supported and easily accessible. The OCPA activities are very important in making the efforts required to realize such a platform."


Mr. Takeshi Shibamoto, Associate Director and Senior Chief Engineer, Technology Development Division, Victor Company of Japan,Limited (JVC) said, "As a consumer electronics manufacturer and as the license holder of VHS, JVC believes compatibility is the most important key for consumer products. We also believe this must be the same for home and mobile devices connected to Contents Delivery Networks. We are very pleased to contribute to the standardization of the platform by participating strongly in the OCPA and expect such an open platform will be provided through the OCPA for the benefit of both contents providers and consumers."


Dr. Keitaro Hanada, Senior Technical Specialist, System Technology Development Center, Corporate Research and Development Group, Sharp Corporation. commented that, "The users expect not only the kind of functionality familiar on today's embedded devices. Users' interests are shifting to wanting also to receive services and contents that come via networks. Thus, it is becoming very critical to prepare the standard platform that is able to cope in a flexible manner with these new services and contents. By setting up the OCPA, I am confident that we can carry out the activities to develop new businesses based on the new open platform."


Kazunori Ukigawa, President and CEO of Justsystem Corporation said, " As a board member of the OCPA, I am thrilled to contribute further to the market development of Tao's open platform for multimedia content. Tao's rich multimedia technology based upon its unique virtual processor technology gives competitive edges to application and content providers in Japan. Through the OCPA's activities, Justsystem will strive to do best to make Tao's platform even more valuable and attractive for all players involved in the digital home appliance and wireless markets of Japan and elsewhere."


Francis Charig, Chairman, Tao Group Ltd. said, "Tao is fully committed to supporting the open approach of the OCPA and we are excited to be able to make some contributions to its development. Tao will be extremely involved in the operations of the organization and will be making every effort to make sure that the results meet the aspirations of all the membership."

Open Contents Platform Association (OCPA)

Chairman:		Yasuo Nishiguchi
			President &Representative Director, Kyocera Corporation
Vice Chairmen:		Masahiko Terada
			President , Victor Company of Japan,Limited (JVC)
		Shigeo Misaka
			Corporate Senior Executive Vice President, Sharp Corporation
		Francis Charig
			Executive Chairman, Tao Group Ltd.
Chief Executive Member:		Justsystem Corporation
Executive Members:		Kyocera Corporation Sharp Corporation Victor Company of Japan,Limited (JVC) Tao Group Ltd. Fujitsu Prime Software Technologies Ltd.
OCPA Secretariat:
Address:	Nishi-Shinjuku Mitsui Bldg 18F No.1805 6-24-1 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku, Tokyo 160-0023 Japan Tel: +81-3-5322-7208; Fax: +81-3-3348-5568 Homepage: http://www.ocpa.jp/ e-mail:[email protected]

OCPA Prospectus

With the rapid proliferation of the Internet it is now a reality for consumers to expect to access a wide range of contents and services through a variety of network-connected devices. These include PDAs, phones, web tablets, digital cameras and smart phones.

The implication of this is that service providers will be required to develop contents and applications for an unmanageable number of execution environments. As for hardware manufacturers, it is obvious that this glut of devices with various processors and operating systems will inevitably push up development costs application and device time to market. These combined inconveniences will definitely bring about an unfavorable outcome to users.

In order for operators and manufacturers to provide the consumer with the best possible benefits, it is necessary to forge a truly "open" environment; the emphasis of this has to be on enabling contents providers, ASPs and hardware manufactures to compete freely and fairly.

To create these conditions, we have established the Open Contents Platform Association (OCPA). The purpose of this is to promote the global standardization of an open platform worldwide, which is independent of underlying hardware, operating system and language. The Platform uses Tao Group's intent media platform as a core technology, since the virtual processor technology upon which intent is based is not only independent of hardware and operating system, but is also justly famed for its excellent multimedia and Java technology capabilities.


Benefits to the industry sectors

Various specifications and structures have been developed for the OCPA to enable the development of the open platform that will bring various benefits to hardware vendors and contents/application providers.

*Hardware Vendors
	By supporting the OCPA standard, hardware vendors can provide OCPA-compliant contents on their own products to the users without developing new contents
*Contents Providers
	By supporting the OCPA standard, contents providers can reuse their own application/contents on different OCPA-compliant hardware devices.
*Application Service Providers
	By supporting the OCPA standard, application providers can provide various packaged solutions without concern for differences between hardware devices.