Nortel Breathes New Life into the eCommerce Experience, Announces First-Ever Customer to its web.alive Virtual World Application

Lenovo Uses web.alive to Let Shoppers Browse, Demo and Interact with Other Shoppers and Lenovo Staff in Real-Time 3D.

OTTAWA – Just months after announcing its incubation efforts to develop web.alive, a new virtual world business application, Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT ] today announced that Lenovo, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of personal computers, is using the application in a new online virtual store as a way to give consumers an exciting new avenue for e-commerce.

The Lenovo “eLounge” virtual store is being showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week at the Venetian Hotel’s AquaKnox.
What are the benefits of virtual stores?

* Shoppers can create personalized avatars to walk around the 3D virtual store and browse through products while interacting with other shoppers and sales staff from around the globe.
* Shoppers can also attend product demonstrations or tutorials given by the virtual store staff.
* People can build social/virtual shopping communities/groups and host online shopping get-togethers with their network of friends, family and associates – a concept defined as assisted e-commerce or social shopping.
* Customer service online is taken to an entirely new level as customers do not need to email, click to call or deal with hundreds of pages of forum based questions and answers. If a customer has a question, they can simply log on and walk up to a customer service representative or ask another customer with a high feedback rating.
* Businesses can use their online stores to test out new store designs/ideas - in a virtual setting.

Interested in seeing Lenovo’s virtual store prototype?

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To see the new Lenovo eLounge, visit www.lenovo.com/elounge ** or visit them at CES at the Venetian Hotel’s AquaKnox.
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For more information on web.alive, visit www.projectchainsaw.com or www.nortel.com/webalive .

Executive Quotes

Ajit Sivadasan, VP Global eCommerce, Lenovo – “Nortel’s web.alive technology could help provide a potential next step in improving the online shopping experience for Lenovo’s customers by allowing them to take a virtual tour of our online store, including browsing through Lenovo products, talk with our staff, look at video clips and meet other shoppers in an immersive 3D environment. This pilot project could lay the foundation for an online shopping experience that is very similar to a person walking into one of our physical stores. Customers can even organize online shopping events with their social networks or attend online Lenovo seminars and product demonstrations. The implications of this technology are significant if customers find it easier to make informed decisions on their purchases online.”

Phil Edholm, Enterprise CTO, Nortel – “Innovative technologies like web.alive fuel the engine behind Nortel’s success. Nortel will continue to introduce innovative technologies that deliver more immersive communications platforms for our customers. Nortel’s Incubation Program was born from a culture of seeing problems not as liabilities, but as opportunities for innovation.”

Arn Hyndman, web.alive chief architect, Nortel – “eCommerce today consists of a single user clicking through an online catalogue of product pictures, user reviews, and possibly a flash demonstration. Nortel’s web.alive application allows businesses to interact and collaborate virtually with their customers, partners and employees over the web, in real-time. It combines the best elements from the online world with the brick and mortar experience to empower hyperconnected shoppers through a more social, robust and immersive online shopping experience.”
What is web.alive and how can it be used?

web.alive is a collaborative, browser-based virtual world application for enterprise use that provides an immersive, interactive and web integrated world with 3D voice and graphics. It facilitates internal collaboration as well as customer interactions over the web and in real time. web.alive brings new dimensions to business collaboration, virtual training and ecommerce.
How did web.alive get created?

In late 2007 Nortel founded a comprehensive Incubation Program aimed at encouraging the company’s ’intrapreneurs’ to ’think big’ with their ideas – to focus beyond incremental product improvements and on the rapid creation of wholly new products, technologies, and business models that will have a disruptive and transformative impact on the market. web.alive is the lead venture from Nortel’s Incubation program.