Exchange Rate as of May 14, 2001

$1 US = 125.94 Yen

***TRIANGLE TECHNOLOGIES NEWS***

+MITSUI AND SPHERA FORM STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

Mitsui & Co., the largest trading company in Japan, and Sphera Corporation (www.sphera.com), the leading provider of hosting automation software, have entered into a strategic partnership agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Mitsui is now the exclusive distributor in Japan of Sphera's popular web hosting automation software, HostingDirectorTM. Triangle Technologies played a key role in the process.

+TOSHIBA CHOOSES SPHERA TO MANAGE ITS HOSTING OPERATIONS

iValue Creation Company, one of the in-house companies of Toshiba, has selected Sphera HostingDirectorTM to automate and manage its Web hosting business operations. Sphera HostingDirector will enable iVC to streamline hosting processes and offer new services and value-added applications throughout Toshiba's regional offices, subsidiaries, and their many websites. Triangle Technologies played a key role in the process.

These deals are representative of some of Triangle Technologies activities in Japan on behalf of its clients.

***ISRAEL-JAPAN NEWS***

+INTERWISE ESTABLSIHES JAPAN OFFICE

InterWise set up a wholly-owned unit in Japan to sell its software for live, interactive chatting use. InterWise Millennium is designed for multiple users to exchange views and opinions real-time and interactively on the Internet by sharing a common server on the Internet.

InterWise has already signed a distributor contract with Nissho Electronics Corp., NTT Communications Corp. and 13 other companies.

***GENERAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS***

+YAHOO JAPAN TO START ADSL SERVICE

Yahoo Japan will begin offering 8Mbps always-on Internet access via ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber lines) in big cities around the country. The company will offer the service, called Yahoo BB, for less than 3,000 yen a month including access charges. This is considerably less than the 5,800 yen that the two regional affiliates of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. charge for their 1.5Mbps service, including Internet access. The NTT firms' service now has 96,000 subscribers, comprising more than half the domestic market. The infrastructure for Yahoo's service will be built by a joint venture set up by Yahoo and four affiliates of Softbank Corp.

+TELECOMMUNICATIONS MINISTRY STRATEGIZE ABOUT INTERNET TELEPHONY

The Telecommunications Ministry will draw up a list of measures to help popularize Internet telephony for implementation in 2002. Currently, most services require Net phone users to have a computer fitted with a microphone and speaker, and the user must open the Web site of their Internet service provider to type in the other party's phone number. The ministry will form a panel of experts including academics and officials from NTT, KDDI net , phone service companies and telecom equipment makers to devise methods to make Net phones more user-friendly.

+VIRGIN MOBILE ENTERS JAPAN

Virgin Mobile is looking at a way to get into the Japanese cell phone market. The company is reportedly looking at buying a stake in the Tuka network, which KDDI is trying to sell off.

+JAPAN PC SHIPMENTS REACHED 12 MILLION IN 2000

According to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), PC shipments in Japan reached 12.1 million units in fiscal 2000, a 21.7% year-on-year increase. Portable PC shipments soared 31% to 6,232,000 units and PC exports grew 17% to 827,000 units. JEITA says PC shipments in Japan for next year will expand 12% to 13.6 million units.

+ASP MARKET TO GROW 1700% BY 2006

Gartner Group Japan says that the Japanese ASP market will jump 17x from $129.5 million in 2000 to $2.23 billion by 2005. Annual growth will average 76.7%.

+UNDER 30’S SATURATED WITH CELL PHONES

According to the Japanese government's Cabinet Office, 90.9% of single adults under 30 and who are not students had a cell phone as of March 31. This is about double the 46% who own a PC. The cell phone penetration rate for over-30 singles was 47.4%, while 23.4% own PCs.

+DSL STATS SHOW GROWTH

The number of DSL users is increasing. At the end of February there were about 34,000, by the end of March it was 68,000, and at April's end there were more than 112,000 users. NTT East and West together hold 44.2% of the market with about 49,000 (nearly doubling their subscriber counts in April). Tokyo Metallic slowed a bit, and eAccess surged, resulting in those two now being tied for second, with around 30,000 and 26%.

+70% OF USERS WANT BROADBAND

According to a study done by NRI (Nomura Research Institute), 70% of those who are using or want to use the Internet at home plan to apply for broadband Internet connection service because of its higher speed and constant 24-hour Internet connections for a flat rate. Of those who are using or want to use the Internet at home, 69.5 % are thinking to apply for broadband connection service such as ADSL or CATV Internet. Greater interests have been paid to the video/music data distribution and the videophone system through the high-speed and flat-rate connection lines.

+PDA MARKET TO DOUBLE BY 2005

Shipments of personal digital assistants (PDA) are expected to grow from 1.4 million units in 2000 to nearly 3 million in 2005 as more people use them to access the Internet.

+XML CONSORTIUM IS ESTABLISHED

XML Consortium of Japan, which promotes the extensible markup language (XML), announced that the organization has initiated full-fledged activities. It has set up five study groups, for substructure technology, application technology, model study, document and Voice XML. The current 101 member companies include major computer manufacturers, system integrators and non-Japanese IT vendors.

+30% OF HOUSHOLDS TO CONNECT TO INTERNET AT 64 KBPS IN 2005

According to Gardner Group Japan, the penetration of Internet connections using ISDN lines, cable TV, digital subscriber lines and fiber-to-the-home and having a transmission speed of 64kbps or faster will reach about 30% of Japanese households in 2005. The number shows that 14 million out of about 46 million households will be using broadband Internet connection services 64kbps or faster in 2005.

Regarding the estimate, the main connection will be using CATV modems in 2005. The penetration rate of the households using cable TV for Internet connection was about 1.4% as of the end of 2000, but the survey says it will grow ten times to 14 percent in 2005. On the other hand, ISDN lines, which are currently most widely used, will not increase much and increase by around 7% during the five years from 2001 through 2005.

+BUSINESSES TO USE 16% MORE PCS IN 2001

According to a survey by Nikkei Market Access, the number of PCs major companies in Japan plan to introduce is estimated to have grown steadily. The survey on corporate PC use said that the number of PCs scheduled to be introduced in fiscal 2001 will increase by 16%.

***NEW TECHNOLOGIES***

+MATSUSHITA DEVELOPS SMALLER BI-DRIECTIONAL ANTENNA FOR BASE STATIONS

Matsushita Electric Industrial developed a small 2GHz band antenna for IMT-2000 mobile phone indoor base stations with a volume that is 10 times smaller than the company's existing one. The newly developed antenna measures 250mm x 170mm x 20mm outside, about one-third the thickness of the existing one.