, founded in April 1979 and incorporated in February 1984 in
Tokyo
Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
,
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
, by Arakawa Toru and Kamada Tomihisa,
[ACCESS Company Profile]
ACCESS. is a company providing a variety of software for connected and mobile devices, such as
mobile phone
A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...
s,
PDAs,
video game console
A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...
s and
set top boxes.
The company makes the
NetFront software series, which has been deployed in over 1 billion devices, representing over 2,000 models, as of the end of January 2011,
[Kamada, Tomihasa]
/ref> and which has been used as a principal element of the widely successful i-mode
i-mode (, ) is a Japanese mobile internet (distinct from wireless internet) service operated by NTT DoCoMo. Unlike Wireless Application Protocols, i-mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards, including web access, e-mail, and ...
data service of NTT DoCoMo in Japan. NetFront is also used by many consumer electronic devices beyond mobile phones, such as the Sony PSP and the Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, Audible audiobooks, and other digital media via wireless networking ...
, both of which have their web browsers powered by NetFront. In addition, the NetFront Browser and related products are used on a wide variety of mobile phones, including those from Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...
, Samsung
Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...
, LG Corp., Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...
, Sony Ericsson
Sony Mobile Communications Inc., originally Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, was a Multinational corporation, multinational consumer electronics and telecommunications company, best known for its Mobile phones, mobile phone products. The ...
and others.[
In September 2005, ACCESS acquired PalmSource, the owner of the ]Palm OS
Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...
and BeOS
BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...
. The company used those assets and expertise to create the Access Linux Platform
The Access Linux Platform (ALP) is a discontinued open-source software based operating system, once referred to as a "next-generation version of the Palm OS," for mobile devices developed and marketed by Access Co., of Tokyo, Japan. The platform ...
, an open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
-based platform for smartphone
A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...
s and other mobile devices, with some proprietary parts including the user interface and some middleware.[ The Access Linux Platform 3.0 was released to the market in October 2008. Two of the world's largest operators, NTT DoCoMo and Orange, produced Access Linux Platform-based handsets until 2013.
In March 2006, ACCESS acquired ]IP Infusion
IP most often refers to:
* Intellectual property, creations of the mind for which exclusive legal rights are recognized
* Internet Protocol, a set of rules for sending data across a network
IP or Ip or ip may also refer to:
Businesses and organi ...
, Inc., a provider of intelligent networking software, providing Layer 2 and Layer 3 carrier-class switching and routing as well as a comprehensive forwarding plane implementation supporting L2, L3 (IPv4 & v6), multicast and MPLS/Traffic Engineering.
ACCESS is active in open source-related efforts, including memberships in the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects.
Background
The Linux Foundation started as Open Source Development Labs in 2000 to standardize and prom ...
and the Linux Phone Standards Forum. In 2007, ACCESS employees presented at GUADEC (which the company also sponsored) and the Ottawa Linux Symposium
The Linux Symposium was a Linux and open source conference held annually in Canada from 1999 to 2014. The conference was initially named Ottawa Linux Symposium and was held only in Ottawa, but was renamed after being held in other cities in Canada ...
.
, ACCESS employs approximately 657 people globally,[ with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan and facilities in the United States (Sunnyvale), Germany (Oberhausen), Korea (Seoul), the PRC (Beijing) and Taiwan (Taipei).ACCESS: Global Offices]
The company reported consolidated revenues of ¥9.4 billion for the fiscal year ending January 2020.[
]
See also
* Qtopia
* Symbian OS
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...
* Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...
References
External links
*
IP Infusion
{{Open Handset Alliance Members
Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
Software companies established in 1979
Software companies based in Tokyo
Japanese companies established in 1979
Japanese brands