Press Release

Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc. and MobiPocket.com S.A. Enter eBook Alliance

NEW YORK, June 26, 2001 -- Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc. and MobiPocket.com S.A. of Paris, France, a Company partially financed by Viventures Partners, created by Vivendi Universal, the Fund's largest investor, today announced an agreement by which the companies will bring electronic books, web-based information services, and office applications to Franklin's award-winning eBookMan® multimedia platform. A beta version of the MobiPocket Reader, which allows eBookMan users to read electronic books on the go, is now available for download from http://www.franklin.com/. With MobiPocket Reader for eBookMan, readers have immediate access to more than fifteen hundred electronic books in English, French, German and Spanish from publishers such as Vivendi Universal Publishing (that has recently acquired the US-based publisher Houghton Mifflin) and Taylor and Francis. MobiPocket Web Companion, which allows for access to and downloading of updated information from select websites, will be made available under the agreement for the eBookMan platform as will MobiPocket Office Companion, which provides a suite of business related applications, such as a reader for Power Point presentations and Word documents.

Barry J. Lipsky, president and chief executive officer of Franklin said ``It's been clear from the beginning that the availability of content is key to widespread adoption of eBooks. Franklin's vision has long been to provide content to all popular handhelds. Our alliance with MobiPocket provides the publishing community the most compelling story yet: an OEB compliant reader format that provides a single file type that allows us to support not only our own eBookman platform but also Palm OS, Pocket PC, and Epoch 32 devices as well. This will allow us to bring our users a much broader selection of content and to give publishers a direct path to bringing their valuable content to more readers on the web.''

M. Thierry Brethes, President and Directeur General of MobiPocket said, ``Through our alliance with Franklin, MobiPocket has demonstrated the success of its software package designated to be platform agnostic. MobiPocket is very happy to support Franklin in its effort to promote electronic content on its mobile devices, both in terms of reading software and content. This alliance provides MobiPocket with its first major partnership in the United States that will help the diffusion of our products worldwide.''

About eBookMan

eBookMan® is a multimedia content player offering mass-market audiences a robust feature set and an optimal display screen at an affordable price. All three eBookMan® models have a large 240 x 200 pixel LCD that displays 87 percent more information than a typical handheld. Each model gives consumers a vehicle to download thousands of electronic books, audio books and musical works, to synchronize between users' personal information manager programs and Microsoft® Outlook®, to record and play voice memos and to write notes easily with natural handwriting recognition. Franklin's open but secure architecture also enables publishers and developers to offer more titles in a protected environment.

The entry model, EBM-900, with a suggested retail price of $129.95, includes a microphone, speaker, headphone jack, multimedia memory card for memory expansion, a USB port and 8MB of built-in memory. The EBM-901, with a suggested retail price of $179.95, adds a backlit, polarized display and additional free books. The flagship model, the EBM-911, suggested to retail for $229.95, offers 16MB of memory and even more free content. EBookMan won the eBook Technology Award from the International eBook Award Foundation at the Frankford Book Fair in October 2000.

Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc. (Amex: FEP - news), the worldwide market leader in handheld electronic books, is the designer and distributor of the award winning multimedia eBookMan® platform. The Company is the exclusive producer and distributor of the ROLODEX® Electronics brand of personal information management products. Franklin has sold more than 25,000,000 electronic books and currently publishes more than 200 titles, including dictionaries and bilingual dictionaries; encyclopedias; Bibles; entertainment titles; education and tutorial publications; and medical reference works. Franklin products, available in sixteen languages, are sold in 45,000 retail outlets worldwide, through catalogs and on line at franklin.com. The Company has sales and distribution subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Benelux countries, Canada, Australia and Mexico, and production management offices in Tokyo and Hong Kong.

About MobiPocket

MobiPocket is the only software and technology company which enables the reading and secured distribution of electronic text, across all existing OS platforms. MobiPocket is also engaged in the online distribution of E-books and of E-content software through its own website. The Company, founded in March 2000, is headquartered in Paris, France, and is partially financed by Viventures. Since its ignition, the Company has significantly leveraged content synergies with VU, establishing a core partnership with Vivendi Universal Publishing. In addition, the MobiPocket software package, developed internally, can be customized to meet clients' needs in a timely manner. Special features may include wireless Internet access to content, sub-pixel rendering to enhance the reading experience, or supporting multimedia features.