Acorn: The Company

Acorn World '97

• Acorn's restructuring is now complete; the separate divisions are no more. There is now one engineering department, and one marketing department.
• Two new directors have been appointed, one in Finance, the other in Sales and Marketing.
• Acorn has now achieved a balance between its Product and Technology business.
• More of Acorn's contract work will become public soon.
• Acorn plans to open a US office during the first quarter of '98. A Japan office will follow in the third or fourth quarter.
• Acorn's NC work was well received. 50% of first-generation NCs were Acorn designs, and they delivered on their specification promises, unlike some other US competitors.
• The history of the NC: Oracle initially approached Apple to produce the reference prototype. After a year with no progress, Oracle turned to Acorn - the first hardware was produced seven weeks later.
• There's life in the Set-Top Box market yet. After it appeared that the Internet craze had killed the demand for Video on Demand systems, Acorn has started to receive orders for their STBs in the last couple of months.
• On the Technology side of the business, Acorn is working with many different companies. A few examples:
  • DEC
  • Raytheon
  • NTT
  • Sprint
  • Curtis Mathes
  • RCA
  • Oracle (OBS3 video server)
  • SGI (Acorn is the preferred partner for their video servers)
  • Boca
  • BSkyB
  • IBM
• Acorn has designed a games machine for Samsung, to replace a machine that they had licensed from Sega. It will run a combination of Educational software and Games, and is based on Risc OS and the ARM7500.
• The company's financial position has improved greatly from the low point three years ago. However, they are not overly concerned about breaking even: far more important is the technology development. This required investment, especially in new engineering staff. Should it be necessary, Acorn is able to raise money in "various ways".
• Microsoft's move into Cambridge is seen as a positive step. The more computer companies in the Cambridge area, the easier it becomes for Acorn to recruit new engineers and managers. Previously, there were few other employers besides Acorn, with the result that people were unwilling to move to the area.
• Acornsoft's Browser and Java Virtual Machine are under development, with beta versions released to Clan Members. Work has also started on providing games for the NC market: older games from other formats will be supported through emulation, whilst new multi-player networked games are under development.
• The outlook for '98 is exciting! Acorn are aiming to exploit the popularity of Thin Clients, the shift away from Microsoft, and the expansion of Java. Just to keep us guessing, Peter Bondar also mentioned "Mergers, Acquisitions and Partnerships"!

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