Thanks to Sharp, Viewing of Business Documents on Mobile Phones now possible

First*1 to Use International SVG-Tiny Standard in Mobile Phone

Sheffield, UK and Worldwide, December 10, 2003 /Wi-Fi Technology News/-Sharp Corporation and BitFlash (Canada) have developed an Electronic Document Display System for mobile phones that enables business documents and graphics*2 such as word processing files, spreadsheets, presentations, etc., used on the PC desktop to be displayed with zoom-in/zoom-out viewing on mobile phones by converting the files to the international standard SVG-Tiny*3 format.

In this era of pervasive networking, the added-value of mobile phones as information terminals is increasing day by day. In particular, equipping mobile phones with QVGA-size LCDs has made it possible to display data at high resolutions heretofore impossible. Also, the need to be able to use data now being used on PDAs and desktop PCs on mobile phones is growing constantly.

To achieve the current Electronic Document Display System which allows users to view a wide range of documents on mobile phones, new Mobile Phone Graphics Rendering Technology and an Electronic Document Conversion Server that converts and trims the size of document files intended for dissemination via mobile phones have been developed. This system also takes into account the fact that data is exchanged in a global telecommunications environment, and complies with the international SVG-Tiny standard.

The Electronic Document Display System developed at this time integrates a Mobile SVG Player and a Document Viewing System from BitFlash, who has a proven track record in Mobile SVG technology, with the vector graphic display technologies nurtured by Sharp over many years as a leading manufacturer of LCD displays. The vector graphic display technologies include rendering technology to smoothly display business documents using the constrained CPU power and memory resources found in mobile phones, display composition technology that supports zoom in/out viewing while keeping layout and font information intact by optimizing the composition of displayed photos, graphics and text contained in business documents, and automatic vector font generating display technology (LC fonts) that makes fonts easily readable even on small screens.

Under the W3C SVG-Tiny profile of the Mobile SVG standard, images are not rendered using an assemblage of dots, but rather are composed by specifying a series of lines and shapes (vectors). This approach enables smooth rendering regardless of the size or resolution of the LCD display screen.

Making use of this system enables smooth rendering with zoom in/out viewing of, for example, business documents used in offices for whatever purpose, even on mobile phones screens. This means seamless linking with PCs, making greater business efficiencies possible.

The rendering software based on the Mobile Phone Graphics Rendering Technology developed at this time will be embedded in the new Vodafone V601SH Mobile Phone by Sharp sold in the Japanese domestic market to provide a new graphics display feature (SVG File Viewing).

In the future, Sharp will be working to open up new markets through alliances with mobile telecom carriers and system integrators, moving toward providing service and system solutions that make use of the Electronic Document Conversion Server.

*1 As of December 8, 2003 (based on Sharp research)
*2 Supports Microsoft? Word?, Microsoft? Excel?, Microsoft? PowerPoint? and Adobe? Acrobat?.
*3 SVG-T (Scalable Vector Graphics-Tiny) is a profile for mobile devices under SVG 1.1 specifications (established in January, 2003), a language based on XML (Extensible Markup Language, the basic technology for standardizing the exchange of information on the Internet), which specifies standards for graphics formats as recommended by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). SVG-T is advocated by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) which formulates specifications for third-generation mobile phones.