Data I/O Announces Anthony Ambrose as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

 Data I/O Corporation (NASDAQ:DAIO), (the “Company”), the leading provider of manual and automated device programming systems, announces the election of Anthony Ambrose as President effective today, and as Chief Executive Officer effective November 14, 2012. He also has been appointed to the Board of Directors of Data I/O Corporation today. He replaces Frederick R. Hume, who is retiring and has resigned as a Director effective today.

“We are pleased to welcome Anthony to Data I/O,” stated Doug Brown, Chairman of the Board of Directors. “We are excited by the strategic skills, electronics systems experience and operational capabilities he brings to the Company.”

Anthony has a track record of successfully developing products and building businesses worldwide. Prior to Data I/O, Anthony was Owner and Principal of Cedar Mill Partners, LLC, a strategy consulting firm. Until 2011, he was Vice President and General Manager at RadiSys Corporation where he led three product divisions and worldwide engineering. At RadiSys, he established the telecom platform business and grew it to over $125M in annual revenues. Until 2007, Anthony was general manager and held several other progressively responsible positions at Intel Corporation, where he led development and marketing of standards based telecommunications platforms, and grew the industry standard server business to over $1B in revenues. Anthony holds a Bachelors of Science in Engineering from Princeton University, graduating Magna cum Laude.

“I am excited and honored to be joining Data I/O,” said Anthony Ambrose. “Data I/O is a worldwide leader in device programming systems and I look forward to applying all of my experience to grow the business.”

Pursuant to NASDAQ rules, the initial equity compensation for Anthony Ambrose was approved by the independent directors and will be classified as an employment inducement grant on October 25, 2012 consisting of 200,000 Non-Qualified Stock Options vesting quarterly over 4 years with a six year life and a 75,000 Restricted Stock Award vesting annually over 4 years.

 Data I/O Corporation
Celebrating 40 years of expertise in delivering intellectual property to programmable devices, Data I/O offers complete, integrated manufacturing solutions in wireless, automotive, programming center, semiconductor, and industrial control market segments for OEM, ODM, EMS and semiconductor companies. Data I/O is the leader in programming and provides hardware and software solutions for turn-key programming and device testing services, as well as in-system (on-board), in-line (right before use at the SMT line), or in-socket (off-line) programming. These solutions are scalable for small, medium and large volume applications with different device mixes. Data I/O Corporation has headquarters in Redmond, Wash., with sales and services worldwide. For further information, visit the company’s website at http://www.dataio.com.