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An Innovative Technology Leader Focused
On Market Leadership & Sustained Shareholder Value
CIC, located in Redwood Shores, CA was founded in 1981 in conjunction
with Stanford Research Institute (SRI), based on research conducted by SRI
on proprietary pattern recognition technologies. CIC focused on further
research and development of the technology, including multi-lingual handwriting
recognition, digital ink compression, biometric signature verification and
electronic signature technologies.
For the first seventeen years, the Company focused primarily on text
entry applications, utilizing CIC developed pen enabled tablets and handwriting
recognition software, to bypass the keyboard and provide direct input to
desktop computers in the Asian market. This effort involved establishing
joint ventures in China and in Japan. In 1997, the Company addressed the
US market with a major effort to sell through retail channels. During this
period, the Company expanded on and developed a wealth of new technology
including handwriting recognition for handheld devices, biometric signature
verification and ink compression. The direct text entry to desktop PC market,
however, was not developing acceptable levels of revenue.
In January 1998, the Company implemented a plan focused on software only,
leveraging key CIC technologies including handwriting recognition and biometric
signature verification aimed at high potential nearer term emerging market
opportunities.
The initial strategy introduced text entry software (Jot) as an OEM embed
on handheld devices such as PDAs and as a direct customer download via CIC.com.
This strategy accelerated sales growth, driven by a series of OEM wins whereby
Jot was chosen/embed by leading OEMs including Microsoft, on the new CE
handheld computer device, and Ericsson on the world’s first smartphone (R380).
In parallel, CIC sold Jot directly to Palm Pilot owners via the Internet
as a replacement for Graffiti and an upgrade version to Microsoft CE based
PDA owners. CIC emerged as the leading provider of text entry software and
as a result CIC’s share price increased from under $1 to nearly $13 in 2000
with well over a billion dollars in investor profits.
By early 2001, however, handheld device shipments of both PDAs and cell
phones began the sharp decline, driven by the economic downturn, negatively
impacted by the dot com bubble burst, and then exacerbated by the tragic
events of 9/11/01.
In the face of this adversity, the Company intensified its focus on the
emerging eSignature market leveraging CIC’s biometric signature verification
technology and acquiring PenOp in late 2000 significantly strengthening
CIC’s Intellectual Property. These CIC technologies enabled the significant
benefits of the paperless environment. The key objective was to close large
scale deployments with Industry leading early adopters in the financial
services industry. This successful effort provided CIC with the benefit
of direct valuable feedback on desired product functionality and established
the basis for positive references from highly respected leaders.
Since the inception of the eSignature market, triggered by the passing
of the eSign Law in late 2000, CIC has emerged as the dominant player and
market share leader acknowledged by several studies. Most recently, CIC
was the recipient of the 2007 Frost & Sullivan Market leadership Award for
the Worldwide Dynamic Signature Verification Market. Although the Company
has an installed base of well over 400 customers worldwide, with significant
follow on revenue potential, the major factor in its leadership position
derives from wins with the Industry leading early adopters in the financial
services industry such as AIG/AG, Charles Schwab, Nationwide Bank (UK),
Prudential, Snap-On Credit, and Wells Fargo, now all successfully deployed.
These respected top tier leaders, with large successful deployments, are
now functioning as positive references validating CIC technology and the
proven ROI.
The reference accounts are now the driving force in accelerating adoption
of CIC eSignature technology to the much larger mainstream market of financial
institutions and a key factor in the adoption of CIC technology by large
enterprise solutions providers (ISVs & VARs) as an integral part of the
larger scale document, workflow & process automation solutions that these
companies provide. CIC’s ISV & VAR partners include Adobe, Ebix/Finetre,
eCom Asia, Guardian Documents, LSI/Fidelity National Info., Integrasys/Fiserv,
and Oracle.
CIC is proud of its history as an acknowledged innovative technology
leader highly focused on maximizing customer value to establish and maintain
market leadership in emerging high potential markets. Despite the challenges
of emerging businesses, CIC has maintained its position as the leading provider
of biometric signature verification and a leading provider of eSignature
solutions. The Company believes it is well positioned to lead the eSignature
market into the take-off stage and to deliver on its objective of rewarding
its shareholders, once again, with significant shareholder profits and increasing
shareholder value.
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