News

Nokia and Matsushita Electric Join UPnP Forum Steering Committee (5/4/2004)

Mobile Communications and Consumer Electronics Companies Join Industry leaders Guiding the Industry Networking Initiative

The UPnP Implementers Corporation (UIC) and the UPnP(TM) Forum today announced that Nokia and Matsushita Electric (MEI), best known for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronics and digital communication products, have joined the UPnP Forum Steering Committee following formal elections.

The Steering Committee provides overall direction to the Forum and is comprised of industry leaders in consumer electronics, computing, home automation, home security, appliances, printing, photographic devices, computer networking and mobile products.

"Nokia focuses on seamlessly extending mobility across the Internet, media, enterprise and home domains. We strongly support the UPnP(TM) Forum as a provider of open specifications that enable connectivity between multiple devices and are excited about bringing our global expertise in mobile communications to the Steering Committee," said Timo Poikolainen, vice president, Marketing, Technology Platforms, Nokia.

"UPnP technology is key to Panasonic's vision of next-level connectivity in which networked consumer electronics seamlessly work together," said Mr. Ikuo Minakata, director, Standardization & Collaboration Center of MEI.

"We are delighted to have Nokia and MEI as new Steering Committee members," said Toby Nixon, chair of the UPnP(TM) Forum Steering Committee. "Their leadership in the communications and consumer electronics industries is a great indication of the value of UPnP technology for mobile devices and consumer electronics products."

The UPnP(TM) Forum is an industry initiative with more than 640 members working together to develop standards to enable simple and robust connectivity among stand-alone devices and PCs from many different vendors. The UIC is a non-profit corporation that certifies UPnP devices.

Current Steering Committee members also include Broadcom Corporation, Canon, Inc., Echelon Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation, Lantronix, LG Electronics, Microsoft Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Pelco, Inc., Philips Consumer Electronics, Pioneer Research, Ricoh Corporation, Samsung Electronics Company, Ltd., Siemens AG, Sony Corporation, and Thomson Inc.

www.upnp.org