COWON Ships the Next-Generation COWON Q5W Wireless Portable Multimedia Player

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Delivering the ultimate wireless connectivity and multimedia experience in a single portable device, COWON America, Inc., today announced the shipment of its next-generation COWON Q5W portable multimedia player (PMP). The COWON Q5W is the industry’s first PMP to combine Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® wireless technologies with an ultra-high resolution 5-inch widescreen color TFT LCD, touch-sensitive interface, Microsoft Windows® CE 5.0 Professional operating system, and a AMD Alchemy™ Au1250™ 600MHz processor.

Introduced to the U.S. market by COWON Systems, a global leader in digital multimedia solutions, the COWON Q5W is now available at JetMall (www.jetmall.net) and at select U.S. authorized retailers Amazon.com, Newegg.com, B&H Photo-Video, ZipZoomFly.com and eBay.com.

“The COWON Q5W is the first three-in-one portable device that delivers premium multimedia player, mobile PC and GPS navigation capabilities to holiday gadget shoppers and digital media enthusiasts nationwide,” said Francis Choi, senior marketing manager, COWON America, Inc. “Discriminating consumers can now do it all in one definitive PMP package: watch movies on a large widescreen, use Wi-Fi to browse the Internet and check e-mails, wirelessly connect to Bluetooth-enabled stereo headphones and even plot their journey home with an optional GPS navigation package. To top it off, the Q5W offers 40GB or 60GB of storage capacity, an advanced photo and document viewer, built-in stereo speakers, an FM tuner and the industry’s best audio/video format support.”

Next-generation Wireless PMP

The COWON Q5W runs Windows CE 5.0 Professional, Microsoft’s componentized, real-time operating system developed for small footprint consumer electronics devices. The COWON Q5W also incorporates the AMD Alchemy Au1250 600MHz processor, a low-power, high-performance, system-on-chip solution designed to bring media center-quality functionality to portable devices.

With its integrated Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g), the COWON Q5W enables users to wirelessly connect to the Internet to surf the Web, use e-mail and MSN voice-enabled Messenger service. The pre-installed Adobe® Embedded Flash® Player 7 allows users to create and experience interactive content, applications and video on the Web. Additionally, the COWON Q5W includes the latest Bluetooth 2.0 technology to allow users to wirelessly connect to Bluetooth-enabled stereo headphones.

Distinctive PMP and GPS Navigation Device

The COWON Q5W is available with 40GB or 60GB 1.8-inch hard-disk storage capacity, 128MB of DDR2 SDRAM and 64 MB of NOR Flash memory. Every COWON Q5W is equipped with a 5-inch, widescreen, 16-million-color TFT LCD with ultra-fine 800x480 (WVGA) resolution. The display also functions as a touch-sensitive interface using COWON’s Wing Click GUI optimized for faster, ergonomic finger or stylus navigation.

Additionally, the COWON Q5W provides a wireless remote controller, FM radio and recorder, voice recorder with internal microphone, built-in stereo speakers, and TV-out supporting component, s-video and composite connections. The PMP also functions as a full-screen photo and document viewer (Word, Excel and PowerPoint viewers available with optional Windows CE Professional Plus purchase), and a high-capacity USB 2.0 data storage and photo backup device for digital cameras (USB 2.0 host) with support for popular image formats including JPEG, BMP, PNG and RAW up to 10MB.

The COWON Q5W offers an optional GPS navigation package using COWON Navigator cradle equipped with GPS receiver antenna (SiRF III internal), FM transmitter switch for audio playback on vehicle radio. COWON GPS package also includes Tele Atlas® premium digital map data of North America featuring 11 million points-of-interest and NavMate® navigation software.

With the addition of GPS navigation package, users can extend the versatility of the COWON Q5W to include in-vehicle use as a GPS navigation device to plan routes and pinpoint destinations.

The COWON Q5W is also outfitted with the latest portable multimedia technologies, and supports an expansive list of digital media formats and codecs, including:

• Enhanced sound quality with JetEffect (BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, 3D Surround) and 5Band EQ audio technologies.
• Digital video playback without transcoding of AVI, ASF, WMW, MPEG and OGM file formats; and codec support of DivX, XviD, MPEG4 and WMV 7/8/9 with maximum video resolution of 720 x 480 at 30fps.
• Digital audio playback support of MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG, WAV, FLAC, APE and MPC file formats; and codec support for MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, Wave, FLAC, APE and Musepack with signal-to-noise ratio performance of 95dB.

The built-in Lithium Polymer rechargeable battery provides up to 13 hours of audio and seven hours of video playback in a single charge via standard wall charger. The COWON Q5W measures 5.46 x 3.48 x 0.79 inches and weighs 13.4 ounces.

The prices of the COWON Q5W 40GB and 60GB configurations are $549.99 and $599.99 U.S. (MSRP), respectively. An optional COWON Q5W GPS navigation package is available for $199.99.

Note to Editors: High-resolution product images and detailed specification sheets of the COWON Q5W are available upon request. Please contact Sung Choi at (949) 748-7000 x101 or schoi@xpublicrelations.com.

About COWON America

COWON America, Inc., is a division of COWON Systems, Inc., a global leader in digital multimedia solutions. The company remains at the forefront of new multimedia software developments and sales of COWON products in the North American market, including various versions of multimedia software (COWON Media Center), portable MP3 players (iAUDIO) and portable multimedia players (COWON A2 and D2).

COWON Systems is headquartered in Seoul, Korea, with its North American division office located in Irvine, Calif. More information about COWON America and its products is available online at www.cowonamerica.com.