Portelligent Launches Competitive Intelligence Service for Personal/Consumer Electronics Industry; Clients Include 3M, Eastman-Kodak and Motorola

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 13, 2000--Portelligent Inc., a company delivering product and technology intelligence for the emerging personal and consumer electronics sector, today announced the launch of enhanced services, including an extensive series of tear-down analyses of leading-edge products.

The Portelligent assessment services enable industry professionals in advanced consumer electronics to make faster, better, and more cost-effective decisions about their competitive positioning, technology options, and marketplace opportunities. "Portelligent offers timely, detailed, insightful intelligence for the personal electronics industry," said Denny Hamill, veteran manager at 3M Corporation. "It's a service that helps us, as a materials supplier to the electronics industry, to determine future product design and positioning, keep up with pivotal electronics trends in the Asian markets, and make effective decisions quickly in a rapidly changing business. "Portelligent's focus is on five product families within the personal electronics industry: wireless terminals (phones and pagers); PDAs and consumer electronics (including low-cost products); notebook computers; digital cameras and imaging devices; and consumer broadband (such as set-top boxes and wireless LANs).

The company's core information products include:

Technology Alerts: Filtered, current news on critical component technologies for the personal electronics industry, with emphasis on tracking and analyzing developments in Asia. The Portelligent Technology Alert Service is delivered as a weekly e-mail to subscribers.

Product Tear-downs: Detailed reports on engineering studies that examine the latest personal electronics products and include unique construction, benchmarking, and cost data in a highly-digestible and graphics-rich format. Portelligent tear-downs provide a multi-disciplinary 'system view' of the products that lead the industry in form-factor, technology, feature, and price-point innovation.

Strategic Analyses: Product and technology forecasts, usage assessment reports, and profiles of emerging technology trends and industry players.

Strategic Consulting and Seminars.

"Portelligent designs its information products to provide industry professionals -- including product development managers and engineers, technical marketing managers, competitive intelligence specialists, R&D managers, and industry technologists -- with a wide-angle of view of technical developments in the personal electronics industry," said Dave Carey, president of Portelligent. "Our tear-down reports, tracking services, and strategic analyses allow companies to improve the quality of decisions that will affect their businesses and future competitiveness within the electronics market."

Portelligent began operations in August 2000 as a spinout of two research groups at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) -- the nation's first high-tech research and development consortium. The MCC Portable and Consumer Electronics (PACE) program and the Global Technology Services (GTS) group combined to create Portelligent's core technical staff.

Portelligent's business model includes sales of individual reports, as well as subscription-based access to bundles of information, called channels, on product families. Channel subscriptions -- currently available for wireless terminals, PDAs and consumer electronics, notebook computers, digital cameras and imaging devices, and consumer broadband -- are structured to accommodate technology start-ups with limited budgets as well as multi-division Fortune 500 powerhouses. Each channel includes from 4 to 10 new product tear-down reports per year, depending on the channel, strategic analyses, and full access to the Technology Alerts. Channel subscribers also receive access to all legacy reports within the channel. For a limited time, industry professionals can access and review select reports free of charge without obligation through Portelligent's Web site.

About Portelligent Inc.

Portelligent Inc. provides global product and technology intelligence for companies in the emerging personal and consumer electronics industry. Founded in August 2000 as a spinout from the MCC Research Consortium, the company's information products enable personal and consumer electronics businesses to make faster, better, and more cost-effective decisions about competitive positioning, technology options, and marketplace opportunities. Clients include 3M, Agilent, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, Intel, Motorola and Raytheon.

CONTACT: Portelligent Inc., Austin Don Stroud, 512/338-3600 dstroud@portelligent.com