Audible and Philips Sign Technology Agreement
March 2, 2009 6:00 AM EST
NEWARK, N.J A leading provider of premium digital spoken-audio information and entertainment, Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG, AEX: PHI) today announced a three-year technology agreement. Thanks to this collaboration users of the 2009 range of Philips GoGear portable audio and video players will have access to the over 50,000 titles of spoken-word programming available at Audible, including current bestsellers, history, mystery, speeches, business titles, and literary classics. In addition, the Audible enabled Philips GoGear players will include a free trial to Audible.
Five new personal audio/video devices in the Philips lineup, GoGear Spark, GoGear Aria, GoGear Vibe, GoGear Muse and GoGear Opus, are the first AudibleReady releases in 2009. They will support Audible’s newest file format with synchronized text and images. Thanks to this file format, Philips users will be able to expand their on the go experience through purchase of audiobooks and premium spoken-word content from Audible, as well as picture books and award-winning children’s and young adults literature at AudibleKids.com.
“We are excited to have Philips devices be among the first to access the next generation of Audible technology by supporting our new enhanced content,” said Will Lopes, vice president of Business Development at Audible, Inc. “This agreement marries both companies’ respective technology, allowing consumers to listen to spoken-word content that takes advantage of images and text to deliver a superior experience on truly innovative portable devices.”
“We are genuinely excited about this collaboration with Audible,” said Jasper Vervoort, director of Strategy and Business Development at Philips Consumer Lifestyle, “as it enables us to deliver, next to GoGear superior sound quality, easy access to Audible’s content beyond music”.
For more information on Audible.com, please visit:
For more information on Philips’GoGear range of products, please visit:
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a diversified Health and Well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 121,000 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 26 billion in 2008, the company is a market leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in flat TV, male shaving and grooming, portable entertainment and oral healthcare. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.
About Audible.com
Audible, Inc. (www.audible.com) is a leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment on the internet. Content from Audible is downloaded and played back on personal computers, CDs, or AudibleReady computer-based and wireless mobile devices. Audible has over 50,000 audio programs from more than 800 content providers that include leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Audible is the preeminent provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes Store. Audible, Audible.com, AudibleListener, AudibleReady and AudibleKids are trademarks of Audible, Inc. or its affiliates. Other product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial.
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn.
As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, indebtedness, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.
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