Zi Corp has licensed its eZiText product to handset manufacturer Nanjing Panda Mobile Communications Equipment Co (PMC). PMC is the ninth largest handset company in China and a wholly owned subsidiary of Nanjing Panda Electronics Company. PMC has both design and manufacturing capabilities and is considered one of the fastest growing companies in the Chinese handset market due in part to the wide reach of its parent.

PMC has licensed eZiText in English, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese in its GSM and GPRS handsets for use in strategically important greater Chinese market including China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

China continues to be one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets in the world.

According to China’s Ministry of Information Industry, one in four Chinese are expected to have a wireless phone by the end of 2004 and, as of April, China’s total number of mobile phone subscribers had grown to 295.8 million subscribers, an increase of 27.1 million since January.

The total number of subscribers is expected to reach 320 million by late 2004.

PMC is expected to introduce its new GSM and GPRS handset designs embedded with eZiText in the second half of this year, said Yongqing Hua, Vice General Manager of PMC.

“We consider predictive text a core requirement for our handset designs and Zi, with its extensive Chinese language expertise, is the innovative leader in the field”, Hua said.

“As we continue to ramp-up our in-house design capabilities, we look forward to working closely with Zi as a key component of our products”.

Zi’s Beijing-based regional sales director for Asia, Kam Ching, said the agreement with PMC again demonstrates the value of Zi’s products for China’s leading handset manufacturers.

“PMC is a very important customer for us because of their standing in the key Chinese market”, Ching said.

“PMC’s selection of our products is an important endorsement of Zi’s expertise in the Chinese language and validates our claims that our features, including learning and personalization, are in very high demand among mobile phone consumers”.