Apple Announces QuickTime 6.3 with Support for 3GPP

Apple today announced QuickTime 6.3, the industry's first mainstream solution to support the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard and to deliver a foundation for the creation, delivery and playback of rich multimedia content over wireless networks. Building on the success of QuickTime 6, which surpassed 100 million downloads in less than 10 months, QuickTime 6.3 enables users to share high-quality video, audio and text on a new generation of wireless devices including mobile phones and PDAs. QuickTime 6.3 delivers extensive support for the 3GPP standard, including Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) audio, MPEG-4 and H.263 video, 3G Text (TX3G) and native .3gp file format support.

“QuickTime's support of open standards like MPEG-4 and 3GPP now make it the best technology for creating and deploying content in the wireless world”, said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “QuickTime 6.3 delivers the first 3GPP content creation and playback software and extends our industry-leading support of open standards beyond the desktop into the mobile market”.

“NTT DoCoMo's FOMA is the standards-based 3G service which allows users to enjoy “i-motion” video clip distribution and “i-motion mail” video clip email service”, said Takeshi Natsuno, Managing Director of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode Planning Department. “We are thrilled that QuickTime 6.3 has made standards-based content creation and desktop playback a reality for NTT DoCoMo subscribers that can now share personal movies captured on their phones with friends and family on Mac and PCs”.

“Nokia welcomes the release of QuickTime 6.3, featuring support for 3GPPcodecs and formats”, said Janne Juhola, senior technology manager,Multimedia Technologies, Nokia. “Our company is strongly committed to the creation of an ecosystem in which open standards ensure interoperabilityacross a wide range of device categories, networks, services andapplications. Nokia believes the inclusion of 3GPP support in QuickTimecreates a wealth of exciting new opportunities for both desktop and mobile phone users”.

Extending the reach of multimedia to a new generation of wireless devices, QuickTime 6.3 support for 3GPP delivers high-quality video, audio and text for use in end-to-end, standards-based content delivery solutions. Thehigh-performance MPEG-4 video codec and the time-tested H.263 video codec both provide excellent results at low data rates. The modern AAC audio codec delivers exceptional quality music at a broad range of data rates while AMR provides narrowband audio encoding designed specifically for speech. 3G Text support in QuickTime 6.3 is time-based for accurate synchronisation oftitling and captioning with audio and video tracks.

Additional QuickTime 6.3 features include automatic streaming transportdetection for a more reliable streaming experience, improvements to DV audio and video synchronisation and enhanced support for Apple's Keynote, iMovie and iDVD applications. QuickTime 6.3 is available immediately as a freedownload for Mac and Windows users at www.apple.com/ie/quicktime/download.

QuickTime is Apple's industry-leading, standards-based software fordeveloping, producing and delivering high-quality audio and video over IP, wireless and broadband networks. As the platform of choice for contentcreators worldwide, QuickTime delivers the full media experience forthousands of unique software titles and enhanced music CDs. QuickTime was chosen by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) as the base file format for MPEG-4 and is at the core of the 3GPP standard.

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