Lightning Strikes a Third Time as Bitstream Releases Faster, Better BOLT Mobile Browser

Expanded language support, copy and paste text and other new features make the Beta3 version of BOLT the market’s fastest, most fully-featured browser for mobile phones of all types

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – June 29, 2009 – Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ: BITS) today announced the availability of its much anticipated update to BOLTTM, the company’s web browser for mobile phones of all types. Complementing improvements to existing features in the even faster Beta3 release of BOLT are the ability to copy and paste text from web pages, enhanced font rendering, inline entry of text into online forms and support for languages using Cyrillic alphabets.

Based on beta user input after more than one million installs of the BOLT mobile browser, Bitstream added new features that make BOLT the most fully-featured browser for the widest range of mobile phones.

BOLT’s new features let users:

Copy and paste text
Enter and edit text directly within online text boxes
Upload files such as videos to YouTube or pictures to Photobucket
Order favorites and arrange them into custom folders
Toggle between viewing websites with or without images displayed

As part of its commitment to the BOLT user community, Bitstream has also created a forum at http://boltbrowser.com/forums/ where BOLT users can post questions and support issues in a public conversation. Bitstream’s team of technologists will monitor these conversations, help users solve device-specific issues, offer tips and tricks for using BOLT and more easily learn the new features BOLT users desire.

BOLT Beta3 also includes many enhancements based on feedback from beta users, including:

Rendering bold, italics, superscript and other rich text styles
Enhanced rendering of complex web pages
Faster page rendering
Servers upgraded to WebKit 4

Recognizing that some mobile phones currently in use cannot support robust applications and some network providers limit the size of application downloads, Bitstream has created a new light version of the BOLT mobile browser, BOLT liteTM. BOLT lite contains all the essential features of the BOLT mobile browser, retaining BOLT’s feature-rich functionality, best-of-breed download speeds and desktop PC-style page layout. BOLT lite’s 140kb package has been optimized for entry-level devices by eliminating BOLT’s non-critical features such as landscape and portrait orientation settings, inline videos, transport protocol settings, copy-paste operations, favorites organization, inline editing, find in page feature, and 3XL magnification. Both BOLT and BOLT lite include the additional language support in this release.

The new font support faithfully renders web pages using Cyrillic alphabets for languages such as Russian and Ukrainian, making BOLT usable for the more than 200 million mobile phone subscribers in Eastern Europe. With its heritage in software development and font technologies, Bitstream has built the BOLT mobile browser to scale text and images in six display sizes: small, medium, large, xl, xxl and 3xl. No other mobile browser for feature phones or BlackBerry smartphones can display or scale Cyrillic text with the size range or crisp clarity of BOLT.

“Bitstream expects BOLT to become very popular in Eastern Europe where many countries have mobile penetration rates exceeding 100 percent,” said Anna Chagnon, president and CEO of Bitstream. “We specifically engineered BOLT to make it easy for people to use their mobile phones for social networking, searching, communicating and watching videos. Our users have validated our design, making Google, Orkut, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and YouTube the top sites viewed on BOLT.”

BOLT features unrivaled speed – consistently at least 25 to 50 percent faster than competitors. The WebKit based BOLT browser offers ultra-fast viewing of streaming and flash video, high standards compliance, rich media, and graphics enabling people to view websites just as they do on a PC.

BOLT Usage:

The BOLT mobile browser has been installed more than 1 million times by people all over the world. BOLT has been installed on more than 1,000 mobile phone models from over 50 handset manufacturers.

People are spending a lot of time using BOLT. More than 20 percent of all BOLT sessions last longer than 30 minutes; more than 10 percent of all sessions last longer than one hour. One reason BOLT sessions last so long is that users are spending a lot of time social networking. A whopping 40 percent of all websites visited using BOLT are social networks. Depending on the geographic region, either Facebook or Orkut is the most visited website by BOLT users.

The top destinations of BOLT users are:

Social networks (e.g., Facebook, Orkut)
Search (e.g., Google, Yahoo!)
Video websites (e.g., YouTube, Dailymotion)
Microblogs (e.g., Friendster, Twitter)
News (e.g., CNN, New York Times)
Entertainment (e.g., One Manga, Trenton Made)
Sports (e.g., ESPN, Cricinfo.com)
Email (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo Mail)
Mobile Content (e.g., Zedge, Peperonity)
Shopping (e.g., Amazon.com, eBay)

People are enjoying the video streaming feature of the BOLT browser – the only mobile browser that lets people enjoy streaming videos on average mobile phones from such popular video services as YouTube, vids.myspace.com, video.yahoo.com, blip.tv, dailymotion.com, metacafe.com and more. Of the total bandwidth used by all BOLT users surfing the Internet, a substantial portion was consumed by streaming video. To complement the new support for Cyrillic alphabets, BOLT now supports video streams from the popular Russian video sharing site, RuTube (http://rutube.ru/).

Built with proprietary compression, navigation and rendering technologies, BOLT enables users to find and read information quickly and easily. Once users have navigated to the specific section of the large web page they are viewing, they can then zoom in to display clear text and images that look crisp on even small mobile phone screens.

BOLT’s feature set includes:

Fast, secure, desktop-style web browsing on both high-end and low-end handsets
Streaming video capabilities
Split screen and full screen modes for easy navigation and viewing
Easily add and select favorites and view browsing history
Intuitive keystroke shortcuts for easier navigation and content selection
Protection against spyware and malicious or faulty add-ons
23:1 compression uses less data than competing browsers

BOLT and BOLT lite are available for free to anyone as part of Bitstream’s public beta test. Visit http://boltbrowser.com to download BOLT today. People who have already installed a previous version of BOLT on their phones will be prompted to download and install the update when they next start the mobile browser.

About BOLT

The BOLT mobile browser, compatible with the majority of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones, offers unrivaled speed and desktop-style web browsing including the ability to stream video. A patented split-screen viewing and intuitive keystroke shortcuts make navigating web pages simple. Download BOLT for free at http://boltbrowser.com – the mobile Internet has never looked this good on your phone.

About Bitstream

Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ: BITS) is a software development company focused on bringing unique software products to a wide variety of markets. The company’s core software products include award-winning fonts and font rendering software, mobile browsing and variable data publishing and web-to-print software for personalized marketing. For more information about Bitstream please visit www.bitstream.com.