WARRINGTON, England, October 19 /PRNewswire/ --

- Portable Data Terminals Now Offer Required High-Performance When Reading Any Kind of Ticket

Hand Held Products, the global leader in image-based data collection solutions, and CASIO Europe, have teamed up to provide German Rail with a new imaging-based solution for processing e-tickets. German Rail, Europe's largest railway, has implemented a new ticket and mobile ticket system using Casio's IT-3000 mobile computer powered by Adaptus(TM) Imaging Technology 5.0.

Prior to deploying this new solution, German Rail conductors were forced to manually type in a 16-digit ticket number whenever a home-printed ticket (or e-ticket) was presented. Recently, the railway experienced exponential growth in e-ticketing, and currently processes over 50,000 e-tickets per day.

More than 12,000 CASIO IT-3000's are being delivered via Systemtechnik, a German company that helped develop the product. The project was won after an EU-wide public tender. A result of close cooperation between CASIO Europe and Siemens VDO, the new IT-3000's will handle the mobile ticket sales as well as provide an easy way to read and validate train tickets. Systemtechnik's built-in SmartCard technology enables the conductors to receive secure payment via credit cards, as well as quickly and easily read and validate the many different ticket varieties, including e-tickets, of its many thousands of daily passengers.

"We required a solution that enabled our conductors to sell and print tickets on the train, receive secure payments, and quickly read and validate train tickets with an Aztec barcode - home printed and at a later stage from an electronic display. This required not only an update to our existing hardware, but also an update to the technology behind the e-tickets we offer to our customers," said Patrick Neehuis, project manager of 'Mobile Terminal 2' at German Rail.

"Hand Held Products was an integral partner in providing German Rail with a solution optimized for their requirements," said Thomas Uppenkamp, sales manager of CASIO's Industrial Solutions Division. "Their expertise in applying imaging technology to data collection applications combined with our best-in-class mobile computing terminal enabled us to provide German Rail with a market-leading solution."

"German Rail is an excellent example of an enterprise that is in tune with the demands of its customers - they have revolutionized their passenger ticketing process in order to give the customer the best experience possible," said Roel Vreeburg, senior vice president international sales, marketing and services for Europe & Asia at Hand Held Products. "Together with CASIO, we provided a solution that allows German Rail meet the demands of the market today, and to adapt to future applications including reading mobile ticket bar codes from mobile phone or PDA displays."

About Hand Held Products

Hand Held Products is the world's leading provider of image-based data collection solutions for mobile, wireless and transaction processing applications - such as bar code scanners, mobile computers and transaction terminals.

The company has a worldwide network of partners, and an extensive client base across many different markets. Based in the US, its European headquarters are in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

About CASIO COMPUTER CO., LTD.

CASIO COMPUTER CO., LTD. is one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics products and business equipment solutions. Since its establishment in 1957, CASIO has strived to realize its corporate creed of "creativity and contribution" through the introduction of innovative and imaginative products. Today, CASIO's offerings include timepieces, digital cameras, cellular phones, electronic dictionaries, calculators, musical instruments, system equipment, and electronic components such as LCDs.

News and product information from CASIO is available at http://world.casio.com/

For more information, please visit the website: www.mobileticketing.com or www.handheld.com.

Contacts: Kirsi Rolf - kirsi.rolf@handheld.com, +31-40-2901602