Panasonic Fax Products Awarded Top Honor by Independent Test Lab; Business Equipment Research...

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

SECAUCUS, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2002

Panasonic, which is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its Panafax(R) brand, has taken top honors in the 2002 Digital Office Awards sponsored by Business Equipment Research and Test Laboratories Ltd. (BERTL),

Panasonic received BERTL's Best Fax Products rating for outstanding quality, design and innovation in its fax and Internet fax devices. The winners in the internationally acclaimed "BEST of the BEST" competition were announced this week by BERTL.

Considering the multitude of reputable fax products and brands on the market, it is all the more extraordinary that BERTL singled out one brand as the best that the industry has to offer. The recognition is the latest in a string of industry awards that Panasonic has racked up for its fax products.

These include "Facsimile Manufacturer of the Year," and "Facsimile Manufacturer of the Decade" for the 1990's from The Cannata Report.

According to Carmel Rowley, BERTL CEO and managing director, the award is based on the testing facility's independent evaluation of 200 digital imaging devices, including fax products, which took place over a 12-month period.

"In addition to product evaluation, we factor in product feedback from end users and resellers," Rowley said. "The corporate sector is BERTL's primary focus. In judging which manufacturer most deserved to be classified as providing the 'BEST of the BEST,' in terms of functionality and performance, we immediately thought of Panasonic."

"The company delivers highly functional departmental workhorses and Internet fax- capable devices designed to cater to international corporations that struggle to reduce overhead and running costs," Rowley continued. "I believe that Panasonic was, in fact, one of the first to market with Internet fax technology and has maintained a dominance in this sector of the fax market ever since."

Rowley added that another critical factor in BERTL's selection of the "BEST of the BEST" award is product reliability. "In our 12 years of testing products, BERTL has never had a bad experience with a Panasonic fax," Rowley said. "Indeed, the feedback we have received year after year from product resellers and end-users has supported our own lab experiences."

Not satisfied with resting on its laurels, Panasonic continues to invest in expanding its fax technology. While traditional fax transmissions and receptions are trending downward due to the proliferation of email, Panasonic has introduced new hybrid fax products that are half traditional phone line fax, and half email/Internet devices.

Panasonic Document Imaging Company now offers 14 multifunctional products with fax capability ranging in speed from 5 to 60 pages-per-minute, including nine products that are capable of Internet faxing.

"We're proud of our heritage and leadership position in the business products industry," said Bill Kopp, President of Panasonic Document Imaging Company. "Having the resources and backing of one of the largest electronics companies in the world allows us to continue our research and development into cost saving, productivity enhancing technologies, including facsimile. Our extensive research into customer needs has given us insight into creating fax products that are truly outstanding in their quality, design, and innovation as recognized by BERTL."

Some of Panasonic's recent innovative fax product introductions include real typewriter style, QWERTY keyboards for easy programming and sending to email addresses. Email addresses can be downloaded directly from a company's global address book using LDAP technology.

All Panafax products can call for their own routine and emergency service, in addition to being programmed by a dealer remotely over the telephone. They can even automatically order supplies directly from the dealer if the customer so desires. For the IT people, the latest network fax products are great "network citizens" and are truly plug-and-play.

Some of the network technologies supported include DHCP, SMTP, SNMP, and industry defacto MIBs.

The recently introduced Panafax DX-800 sets the new price benchmark in Internet fax standard devices with a suggested retail price of only $2,195. The DX-800 is a network fax product that is capable of faxing (including PC and network faxing), copying, TWAIN scanning, scanning to email, Internet faxing and network printing.

Additionally, the DX-800 includes document management software that can create PDF files from virtually any application or scanned image, among its other capabilities. The network fax can also seamlessly transfer faxes to email and email to faxes, and act as the gateway for LAN and PC faxing.

"Receiving BERTL's BEST of the BEST rating is a solid indicator that we have continued to invest wisely in research and development," Paul Wharton, Panasonic's national marketing manager for Fax/Copier/MFP products noted. "However, product sales are another great barometer of success."

To illustrate his point, Wharton said that during the past year, Panasonic has nearly monopolized the number-one spot on The New York Times "List of Leading Sellers of Fax Products." The Times' list is based on data compiled by NPDTechworld.

BERTL, an independent testing laboratory with facilities in the United States and UK, has pioneered new methods of testing multifunctional devices, introduced a highly sophisticated range of user-relevant tests on "connected" imaging output devices, and developed the world's leading image analyst software, PageCheck(TM).

The Cannata Report is a management report for the office products dealer published twelve times a year by Marketing Research Consultants, Inc. of Glastonbury, CT.

In the United States, Panasonic Document Imaging Company (PDIC), a business unit of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, markets a broad line of digital imaging systems designed specifically for business use. Products available include fax and Internet fax machines, digital copiers, network multifunction devices, and document management systems.

Headquartered in Secaucus, NJ, Matsushita Electric Corporation of America is the principal North American subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE:MC) of Osaka, Japan. For more information, visit www.panasonic.com/office.

All brand names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

EDITOR'S NOTE:

End users may obtain sales information by contacting Panasonic at 1-800-742-8086 or 201-348-7000, or by visiting http://www.panasonic.com/office. Please do not publish the editorial contact telephone number.

If you wish to review a Panasonic document imaging product, please contact Chris Florentz or Charlie Sassaman at 215-592-8601, or at chris@bartgil.com or charlie@bartgil.com, respectively.

Product images can be downloaded from Panasonic's Extranet site at b2b.Panasonic.com/pdic. Username: images, Password: images. Select Marketing Materials, "Select a Product Category" and click on Image Gallery.