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Verizon Wireless nationally launched Get It Now in September 2002. The most recent addition to the Get It Now family of downloads are Get It Now 3D Games, available through the company's VCAST wireless multimedia service. Fueling awareness and demand for all mobile applications, Verizon Wireless has extensively marketed the new VCAST entertainment service. Introduced in the first quarter of 2005, 3D Games are expected to be a large growth segment in upcoming months.

While the company is on track to break the 200 million download benchmark within a few short weeks, Verizon Wireless also announced its Get It Now customers have downloaded:

- More than 120 million applications in the past 12 months, up from 61.5 million downloads during the prior 12 month period.
- More than 56 million applications in the first five months of 2005, compared to 34 million during the same time period of 2004.
- More than 22.5 million game applications from January through May 2005 - nearly double the same period last year.
- More than 50 million games have been downloaded since the launch of the service.

"Get It Now has gone mainstream - we moved beyond the early adopter crowd a long time ago and are increasingly reaching the broader consumer and enterprise markets," said John Stratton, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. "This broader market penetration is a direct result of our joint efforts with the developer community. While we celebrate our successes, we must anticipate the future; customers are more sophisticated, increasingly savvy about mobile, and exhibit much broader and more diverse tastes. At Verizon Wireless, we are poised for that future."

Speaking at the BREW Developers Conference today at 10:40 a.m., Stratton is expected to outline Verizon Wireless' broadband vision, examine strategies for success and discuss how Verizon Wireless' nationwide deployment of its 3G EV-DO network provides an unprecedented opportunity for developers to create new and exciting mobile applications. Get It Now is available on 26 million handsets - more than half of all handsets currently being used by Verizon Wireless' 45.5 million customers and double the number of handsets from one year ago. Verizon Wireless' ongoing commitment to make ever more powerful handsets available to its customers is driving this adoption and providing developers with new opportunities to develop more advanced applications.

Get It Now's virtual shopping aisles include getGAMES, getTONES, getGOING, getPIX, getFUN and getMESSAGING - giving Verizon Wireless customers an easy way to find what they want, when they want it.

The most popular category remains getGAMES, the virtual shopping aisle that offers new 3D Games on VCAST-enabled phones, as well as puzzle and strategy games, action and sports games, classics based on popular board games and games based on favorite television shows and top movie titles.

Other popular aisles in the Get It Now virtual store are getTONES and getPIX. getTONES offers customers thousands of true tone and polyphonic ring tone selections, consisting of pop, hip-hop, country, classical, voice tones from celebrities and sounds from popular movies and television. getPIX provides a variety of downloadable applications to view, store and share photos.

New applications are introduced every Wednesday, so customers can keep their handsets up to date with the latest releases.

"Developers should continue to focus on quality, innovation and creativity," said Jim Straight, vice president of wireless Internet and multimedia services for Verizon Wireless. "Customers want to extend the gaming experience from the console to their wireless phones. Our content providers understand our drive to bring new titles to our diverse customer base - but they also understand what really drives adoption: how well applications work on the handset."