Winbond America Hires Industry Veteran Peter Himes To Lead Its Marketing Team

San Jose, CA, November 12, 2002 - Winbond Electronics Corporation America, a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions to the consumer, computer, communications and electronics products markets, today announced that it has hired Peter Himes as its new vice president of marketing. Himes, a 15-year veteran of National Semiconductor, will be responsible for marketing, promotion and strategic product development of Winbond's mixed signal products. He will report directly to Winbond's president, Dr. Kuang Chiu.

Himes has more than twenty years experience in marketing, product development and technology expertise in the semiconductor industry. Prior to joining Winbond, Himes was senior director of business development and marketing for iDini Corporation, a private wireless Internet software solutions company based in San Jose, CA. Before that, he held senior executive and consulting positions at a number of technology firms, including heading up sales and marketing at Impala Linear Corporation, now a part of Fairchild Semiconductor. In total, Himes spent more than 15 years at National Semiconductor Corporation (NSC) in various management positions including responsibility for the Corporation's corporate and product line marketing, strategy development and corporate technology programs. At NSC, he also held the position of Director, Standard Products Group Strategy Development, reporting directly to the president of NSC.

"Winbond America has spent the past year successfully developing a suite of innovative mixed signal products aimed at meeting the needs of customers in the U. S. and Europe," said Kuang Chiu, president Winbond America. "Peter's mission is to take us to the next level by increasing market awareness of Winbond America's products and driving market demand. As part of ensuring that we continue to grow and garner additional marketshare, Peter will also be responsible for the crucial task of overseeing future product definition."

"I am very excited to be joining the Winbond team," said Peter Himes, vice president of marketing for Winbond America. "Winbond America's proven success in mixed-signal products, coupled with its recent series of innovative product launches, makes it a great company to join. Winbond America is similar to a mixed-signal startup with momentum; they already have winning products, an experienced team and significant market presence. This foundation provides me with a rare opportunity to help grow and mature the Company into a mixed-signal IC center of excellence."

Winbond America designs, develops, markets and sells IC solutions to the global electronics marketplace. With a primary mission of serving the mixed-signal IC needs of computer, consumer and communications electronics manufacturers, the Company has rolled out a series of innovative ICs in the past year, including:

• The WTS701, the industry's first fully integrated, single chip text-to-speech solution. The chip offers true text-to-speech capability for low power consumption, small footprint applications such as automotive appliances, telematics, Smart pagers and other consumer electronics.

• The W68xx family, a series of single-channel voice CODEC chips aimed at telephony, communications and consumer applications requiring -to-digital or digital-to-analog conversion. Based on the Company's advanced mixed-signal technology, the IC also offers easy integration into new or existing designs.

• The WMS72xx series is Winbond America's first family of non-volatile, digitally programmable 256-tap, potentiometer chips. The ICs, which are the only chips on the market featuring a selectable output buffer, are aimed at communications, industrial and consumer applications. The WMS72xx series provide ideal replacements for applications using mechanical potentiometers including those that require a high degree of performance, stability, precision adjustments or improved temperature coefficients. The division is also responsible for all product development and marketing of Winbond's award-winning ChipCorder® voice IC product line.

About Winbond
Winbond Electronics Corporation was founded in 1987 and is based in Hsinchu Science-Based Park, Taiwan. It has since become the largest branded IC Company in Taiwan, offering a broad range of PC and peripheral-related ICs, consumer electronics ICs, multimedia ICs, and memory ICs. Winbond is a market leader in the telephone dialer, PC I/O controller, memory, speech synthesizer and MPEG decoder markets. With three wafer fabs currently in operation, the Company utilizes process technologies ranging from 1.0µm down to 0.13µm. Winbond has approximately 4,000 employees worldwide with design centers located in Hsinchu, Taiwan; Shanghai, China; San Jose, California; and Austin, Texas. World Wide Web WECA home page: http://www.winbond-usa.com; World Wide Web corporate home page: http://www.winbond.com.

Note: Winbond, is a registered trademark of Winbond Electronics Corporation. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.