Extension to Phase II Planned
London, UK and Calgary, AB, Canada — December 20, 2005 – Zi Corporation (Nasdaq: ZICA), (TSX: ZIC), today announced that preliminary results from the first live network trial of Zi Corporation’s revolutionary Qix service discovery engine indicate significant increased usage levels on the mobile phones involved — from simple voice calls to SMS, MMS and Internet access.
Qix was bundled with Virgin Mobile’s Nokia 6630 handsets. Virgin Mobile began the UK-based trial earlier this year in the summer and following the success of the initial phase the operator is now set to commence phase II and extend the trial to more users in the New Year.
Graeme Hutchinson, sales & marketing director at Virgin Mobile, said “Virgin Mobile always puts its customers’ experience first — and the clever technology of Qix helps make complex phones simple to use. Our customers tell us that Qix means they get much more out of their phone — no more delving through menus — they can easily find what they are looking for on their phone simply and quickly. The results show much increased customer usage. This success has us looking forward to extending the trial to more customers and other phones in our range.”
Qix provides for the first time an intuitive, fast search index for a mobile user, in the same way that an Internet search engine helps web surfers find what they are looking for. Qix is an innovative mobile service discovery engine that sits on the phone’s idle screen and combines predictive text and content indexing to enable rapid discovery of contacts, features and services on a mobile phone.
Qix encourages greater Average Revenue per User (ARPU) by significantly reducing the number of key presses needed to use a phone, thereby enhancing the user experience for the subscriber and simultaneously driving service usage and adoption. Over time, Qix’s interactive memory remembers new user data, including new URL bookmarks and called numbers for future presentation. It also tracks frequently used personal selections over time and then presents them with priority over other information, providing easy access to favourite items of the user.
“This is great news for the mobile industry in general and Zi in particular,” said Zi Corporation’s chief technical officer and chief operating officer Milos Djokovic.
“We knew we had something exciting in the labs earlier this year and Qix attracted interest from operators when we previewed it in Europe, North America and Asia. Virgin gave us the first chance to prove it in a live environment, for which we are very grateful, and the early signs are that it is delivering on its promises.”
