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FUJITSU, BELL MICROPRODUCTS ENTER STORAGE DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT

Fujitsu Computer Products of America Inc (FCPA) announced a distribution relationship with Bell Microproducts, an international value-added distributor offering a wide range of high technology products, solutions and services. Bell Microproducts will begin shipping Fujitsu enterprise hard disk drives, mobile hard disk drives and magneto-optical (MO) drives to resellers in North and South America. Bell Microproducts is a Fortune 1000 company with sales exceeding $2.23 billion in 2003.

"The hard disk drive industry is going through a transition driven by the emergence of new technology and products. Fujitsu is excited to work with Bell Microproducts, a recognized leader who shares our commitment to the development of a new generation of enterprise and mobile storage applications," said Lorne Wilson, vice president of channel sales and marketing for Fujitsu Computer Products of America. "Working together, Fujitsu and Bell Microproducts ensure that resellers in North and South America receive cutting edge storage technology, top quality products, and an industry leading support infrastructure to help customers succeed."

Fujitsu hard disk drives and MO drives offer original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), solution providers, value-added resellers (VARs) and system builders a broad range of performance, capacity and connectivity options to serve the commercial and industrial storage markets.

"Bell Microproducts and Fujitsu are two of the storage industry's most respected names and we are excited to formally announce a distribution relationship," said Don Bell, CEO and president of Bell Microproducts. "Our value added solutions model and Fujitsu's technological leadership is a terrific combination that will deliver outstanding performance and support to our diverse customer base."

Fujitsu enterprise hard disk drives include the industry leading MAT and MAU series offering up to 300GB of storage capacity and SCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces. Fujitsu's MAT series enterprise hard disk drive is the industry's first 10K RPM drive to deliver 300GB of storage capacity in a 75Gb per second 4-platter design. The MAU series enterprise hard disk drive is the industry's first 15K RPM, 147GB hard disk drive. Fujitsu has substantially increased the maximum internal data transfer rate on both the MAU and MAT series to 130MB per second and 147MB per second respectively, reflecting a 25 percent improvement over previous generation drives.

Fujitsu's suite of mobile hard disk drives includes the industry's first 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drive and industry leading Parallel ATA hard disk drives. In January 2004, Fujitsu announced the MHT-BH, the first 2.5-inch SATA hard disk drive to deliver the power of the integrated Serial ATA SOC in a 2.5-inch form factor. The MHT-BH hard disk drive features Native Command Queuing (NCQ) that intelligently and simultaneously coordinates up to 32 instructions to be queued and reordered by the hard disk controller, contributing to a significant improvement in overall hard disk drive performance. Additionally, Bell Microproducts will offer Fujitsu's MHU2100AT model, a 2.5-inch 9.5mm mobile hard disk drive offering up to 100GB of capacity and nearly a 30 percent increase in areal density.

Bell Microproducts will also deliver Fujitsu's 3.5-inch magneto-optical technology, a suite of products ideally positioned for system builders, as well as mobile and office-based professionals demanding high-performance removable data storage for multimedia, file backup and archive, and graphics/CAD applications. Available with popular Hi-Speed USB or SCSI interfaces, Fujitsu DynaMO drives provide up to 2.3GB of durable, rewritable, removable storage capacity on 3.5-inch robust media.

Bell Microproducts will also support the Fujitsu line with its value added services that include: drive formatting, software loading, firmware upgrading, functional and parametric testing, burn-in, hardware mounting systems, private labeling, destroking, signature string modification and Bell MicroScreen+.