ITOCHU Corporation (“ITOCHU”) and Excite Japan Co. Ltd. (“Excite”) have jointly developed three new applications for iPhone 3G and iPod® touch devices that allow users to view content provided by Excite. These applications, “Excite Bit Koneta,” “Excite ism” and “Garbo,” will be available for free from the “App Store” (an application that allows users to download applications from iTunes) from February 2.

Since the iPhone™ 3G was released in July 2008, 11.3 million units have been sold around the world (as of the end of January 2009). The App Store started at the same time, and since then end users have downloaded 500 million applications (as of the end of January 2009).

The iPhone™ 3G has been well-received both in Japan and overseas a groundbreaking mobile device that has completely transformed traditional wisdom about mobile telephones by including functions such as 3G support, a Wi-Fi function, internal GPS, a Web browser and email client in a single device, along with an advanced multi-touch interface.

ITOCHU and Excite have cooperated to develop applications that allow users to use their iPhone 3G and iPod touch to receive and view RSS feeds of content distributed by Excite from anywhere and at any time, so long as they are connected to a 3G network or a Wi-Fi network. These applications, which have been developed by ITOCHU, are available free of charge.

Summary of applications available

Excite provides a number of highly original services for stimulating the intellectual curiosity of people with urban lifestyles via its “Excite” information website (http://www.excite.co.jp/). The new applications will allow end users to get RSS feeds of the highly original content available from Excite, and to view this content on their iPhone 3G and iPod touch. One advantage of these applications is that they allow users to view a “List of articles,” “Summaries” and “Details” all in a single location, without having to start up a separate browser for each type of content. Each application can also store up to fifty articles, so that they can be viewed offline later.

Application lineup and availability

1. “Excite Bit Koneta” http://www.excite.co.jp/News/bit/
2. “Excite ism” http://www.excite.co.jp/ism/
3. “Garbo” http://woman.excite.co.jp/garbo/

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