Zi Corporation, which is also known as the T9 competitor in the text-input business, has announced that its long-time client, Sony Ericsson, has agreed to “significantly expand its existing licensing relationship” with them.
This is good news for the Canada-based Zi Corp, as the new arrangement will increase their revenues up to 33% per year. To put it in other words, the contract with the Swedish-Japanese handset maker will generate multi-million dollars for Zi.
As for the impact for the end users, they will keep seeing Zi Corp’s predictive text and handwriting recognition technology used on their Sony Ericsson phones.
Commenting on the announcement, Zi Corp’s CEO Milos Djokovic whom I briefly met at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, said: “Sony Ericsson has demonstrated their commitment to offer a broad range of world class handsets that both simplify and enrich the wireless communication experience of their consumers. Sony Ericsson’s choice of Zi as their primary user input technology partner further validates our technology leadership. It is a pleasure for us to report on the continuation and the expansion of our relationship with this industry leader.”