Apple and RealNetworks Announce Internet Streaming Collaboration

NEW YORK—June 12, 2000—Apple® and RealNetworks, Inc. today announced that RealNetworks has licensed Apple Intellectual Property for streaming digital video and audio over the Internet in the QuickTime™ format, and that the two companies have also agreed to support the principles of the “Ask, Tell, Help” initiative. RealNetworks also announced that its RealServer 8 now supports the delivery of Apple's QuickTime-based content to Apple's QuickTime players and is immediately available for download at http://www.realnetworks.com/products/servers/server8.html.

“We heartily welcome RealNetworks to the QuickTime Streaming Server community,” said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. “Apple's open-source QuickTime Streaming Server has already been licensed by IBM, Sun, SGI, Akamai and many others, helping to provide great content to the more than 50 millionQuickTime players that have been distributed worldwide.”

“RealServer is already the media delivery server of choice for tens of thousands of content providers worldwide,” said Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks, Inc. “RealServer 8's support for Apple's QuickTime now provides content creators and infrastructure providers a unified way todeliver the widest array of content to the largest possible audience. We're delighted to be collaborating with Apple on this exciting effort.”

RealNetworks and Apple also agreed today to support the principles of the “Ask, Tell, Help” initiative, which promotes good Internet manners' by ensuring that each company's player applications will inform and ask the user before changing the user's default player selection for common mediaformats.

RealServer 8 is the world's most scalable, cross-platform, streaming media server with unparalleled broadcasting capacity for reaching the largest audiences on the Internet. RealServer 8 delivers the highest quality media experience, including RealVideo® 8—VHS quality for broadband viewers.RealServer 8 supports the widest array of media types, including support for QuickTime to QuickTime players. Over 350,000 RealServers have been distributed by RealNetworks. RealServer 8 Preview is available for free at www.realnetworks.com. General release of RealServer 8 is expected in the second half of the year.

QuickTime Streaming Server is the world's first open-source, standards-based streaming server, providing the highest quality streaming video on the Internet. More than 50 million copies of the QuickTime 4 player, which is available as a free download from www.apple.com/quicktime, have been distributed to Macintosh® and Windows users worldwide.

About RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc., based in Seattle, is the recognized leader in media delivery on the Internet. It develops and markets software products and services designed to enable users of personal computers and other consumer electronic devices to send and receive audio, video and other multimedia services using the Web. Consumers can access and experience audio/video programming and download RealNetworks consumer software on the Internet at http://www.real.com. RealNetworks' systems and corporate information is located on the Internet at http://www.realnetworks.com.