SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 19 Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM), a pioneer in the field of mobile and wireless Internet solutions and a leading provider of handheld computers, today announced that it has acquired peanutpress.com, Inc., a leading eBook publisher and distributor of an extensive selection of eBooks for handheld computers. peanutpress offers titles from many of the major commercial publishing houses and, prior to the acquisition, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Boulder, Colo.-based netLibrary, Inc. This union makes Palm a leading eBook distributor for handheld computers in the emerging eBook space. The move -- part of Palm's strategy to deliver end-to-end handheld computing solutions -- enables the company to expand the use of eBooks by consumers and mobile professionals, and in the largely untapped education space. While the eBook space is still fledgling, a December 2000 Forrester report stated that "Digital delivery of custom-printed books, textbooks and eBooks will account for revenues of $7.8 billion -- 17.5 percent of publishing industry revenues -- in five years." The deal includes a web-based storefront containing a growing list of 2,000 titles from most of the major U.S. publishing houses. It also includes the Peanut Reader, the leading eBook reader application, which runs on Palm OS(R) handhelds using Palm OS 3.0 and higher, as well as on Pocket PC handhelds. Peanut Reader and peanutpress.com will be called Palm Reader(TM) software and Palm Digital Media, respectively. Palm Digital Media, which will become a group within Palm, will retain the 17 peanutpress.com employees and remain in Maynard, Mass., where it is currently based.