I read Nick Chalk's article with interest, and I see truth in it. But I think that Acorn has different ways to overcome their financial problems.
One is for sure to move away of the Desktop Market, but this means also to lose a field for experiments with ARM based environments.
The other way is to increase the number of users. This will need a better sales infrastructure covering the whole world, and strong advertising to get them known by people. The other requirement is to swap to a operating system which is well known and widely used. This could be Linux.
If Acorn would change the operating system to Linux, they could provide compatibility to existing products (by introducing a Risc-OS emulator, not the first emulator they have done) and use the wide range of cheap products on the Linux market. The support needed for ARM-Linux today will then be given by Acorn itself.
I think the main point is to get Acorn known to potential customers world-wide.
I'm working in a company which used to produced High-End Cellular Phones. We developed one of the best GSM mobiles in the world. But since we couldn't sell it world-wide with the strength of our competitors, we couldn't increase our output of mobiles to the market. The end of the story is that the whole team of developers is being bought by Nokia.
Maybe a strong partner for Acorn would be able to open the world's markets. I hope it will go this way, but I'm afraid that Nick's article is right.
Survival of the Fittest - Solutions seeking Problems
Disagree? Then reply!