SDC AndTao Group Announces Java Based DRM Music Player For Mass Market

The combination of Tao's 'intent', Java VM and SDC's DRM Music Player enable mass market handset for full length music services 14th February 2005 at 3GSM World Congress, Cannes, France: Secure Digital Container AG (SDC), the leading fully label approved provider and of technology for mobile music Digital Rights Management (DRM), today announced the partnership with Tao Group, the leading Java Virtual Machine (JVM) technology provider to combine SDC's DRM Music Player for mobile phones with Tao's binary portable Multi-Media platform 'intent', including new Java classes for a full fledge music experience on mass market mobile phones.

The download and playback of DRM-protected music tracks requires massive resources on handsets like processor power, storage capabilities and battery power. The only solution for mass-market devices running full-length tracks was a native implementation of the music player, DRM Client and download manager for e.g. progressive download. This requires a huge number of different implementation for every operating system on various handsets and an increase of the costs for such devices. All handsets currently available for full-length music services are in the higher price range because of this reason.

SDC has developed it's DRM Music Player in Java. To use the full > functionality of the player including high security DRM, play lists, etc., a rich implementation of the Java standard CLDC MIDP 2.0 is needed along with an extremely fast JVM. However, this profile is not currently implemented on a broad range of handsets. Tao the leading specialist in high performance Java Virtual Machines has combined the required Java classes with SDC's Java DRM Player to create the capability to run such services without modifications on the phone or the pre-installed Java VM. One of the first devices out of this partnership is the HTC MDA Compact or the XDA II.

More devices will follow as the SDC-Player and tao Java VM Bundle will be pre-installed as an application and change the face of music services completely as carriers can now offer this high demanded services to the mass market and address also the high potential youth market."Another big step in the right direction to enable carriers to offer high quality services such as full length music to the mass market. Tao and SDC will solve the problem of multiple and expensive OS implementations with the usage of a combined Java music application provided by the market leaders in that field" said Michael Bornhäusser, CEO of SDC in Cannes. "The 'intent' Multi-Media platform is enabling SDC to address many different platform configurations quickly and efficiently. The core element being used is Tao's extremely fast J2ME JVM. This has enabled SDC to be able to provide high quality music downloads using Java. This has effectively not been possible in the past. Tao is delighted to be working with the leading Music DRM provider, SDC" said Martin Gossling, Sales Director of Tao.

Tao and SDC have already started the partnership with Microsoft PPC devices and will continue with other devices from various handset manufacturers. An implementation of SDC's OMA 2 DRM client is also on the roadmap for Q3 2005.