SpatialNews Press Release

SPOT and DigitalGlobeTM Sign Exclusive Channel Partnership Contract

www.spot.com

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RESTON, VA and LONGMONT, CO - SPOT Image Corporation and DigitalGlobe signed a 6-year channel partnership contract under which DigitalGlobe has exclusive rights to sell SPOT satellite products and services to customers in the U.S. Defense market and the U.S. agriculture market.

Previously SPOT Image Corporation in the U.S. maintained exclusive single-point distribution rights, and worked with several non-exclusive distributors and value-added resellers. This new business model relies on dedicated channel partners assigned exclusive channel rights in exchange for a long-term financial commitment to SPOT. This partnership will be managed by SPOT Image Corporation, the U.S. SPOT subsidiary which will retain SPOT distribution exclusivity in all other markets in North, Central, and South America.

“We are creating a new worldwide business network with committed companies such as DigitalGlobe,” explains Jean-Marc Nasr, chairman of the SPOT World Group (SWG) “Exclusive channel partnerships are an important part of SPOT’s changing global business model. Our emphasis is now much more on business, with the support of our strong technology behind that business. These changes are particularly important with the upcoming new capabilities from SPOT 5 and the increasingly competitive global marketplace. ”

“This represents an exciting and innovative new business model for SPOT Image Corporation,” explains Gene Colabatistto, CEO of the U.S. corporation, and principal architect of the channel partnership program. “Our business has evolved far beyond selling image data, to developing these kinds of business relationships that allow us to penetrate markets further and faster to provide a broader range of services to our customers. With guaranteed revenue streams, we can now focus on developing other markets and products.”

“The DigitalGlobe team is very enthusiastic about the prospect of teaming with the SPOT Image Corporation,” explains Herb Satterlee, president and CEO of DigitalGlobe. “As we move to commercial operations, we must be able to partner with market leaders to provide product options for our customers. Not only does our relationship with SPOT afford us the product options we are so interested in, but we also get to partner with a market leader that has been providing satellite imagery for the past two decades.”

The U.S. Department of Defense has used SPOT since 1986 for mapping, terrain assessments, and the development of 3D terrain models for training and simulation systems and mission planning. SPOT products are used by government and commercial clients in the agriculture market to provide very rapid and current information on crop conditions both locally and worldwide for market forecasting, disaster response, and long-term planning.

SPOT 5, to be launched in April 2002, will provide very large area 2.5m, 5m, and 10m resolution imagery, along with global elevation models from the dedicated high resolution stereo (HRS) sensors. This complements DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite, which produces 61cm, 2.44m imagery over smaller, more focused areas worldwide. The SPOT satellite constellation with multiple orbiting cameras is the only system able to get daily coverage of any location on Earth.

SPOT Image Corporation in Reston, VA, a wholly owned subsidiary, is part of the SPOT World Group (SWG) with headquarters in Toulouse, France. The SPOT World Group consists of a growing and interconnected network of subsidiaries, receiving stations, and processing centers that act as a single global company providing imagery and geospatial information to support decision-making for businesses and governments worldwide. SPOT is the oldest commercial satellite imaging company, having launched its first satellite in 1986.

DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird, launched on October 18, 2001, is the world’s highest resolution commercial imaging satellite, providing imagery with 61-cm resolution. Following the satellite commissioning period, the 61-cm resolution panchromatic data and 2.44-m resolution multispectral data will be available to customers worldwide. DigitalGlobe released the first imagery from the world’s highest resolution commercial imaging satellite on December 17th, 2002. The images of Antarctica, Bangkok, and Washington D.C. are downloadable from the DigitalGlobe (www.digitalglobe.com) website (click on the red QuickBird First Images link). The images show details never before seen from a commercial imaging satellite.

DigitalGlobe is an imagery and information company located in Longmont, Colorado. DigitalGlobe is establishing a market leadership position by providing the highest-resolution satellite imagery product offering, the greatest collection capacity, and the largest image size commercially available. Currently, there are no plans to launch a comparable commercial satellite until at least 2004. The company offers geographic information products through its digitalglobe.com on-line imagery store, an Internet-based global archive of geographic information available to commercial businesses.

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Jan 28, 2002 Jun 26, 2002