Keith Hall challenged Stan Boland to explain this sudden and drastic change of plan. The Acorn Managing Director's reply is shown below.
Keith
Thanks for a copy of this item.
Until a few weeks ago we had planned to continue the development and launch the product. However, on detailed examination the project became marginal and then too risky. In the context of a company which lost £5.6m on revenues of £5.3m in just 6 months, we simply had to focus the company on business activities which, although also risky, have much higher market potential and are therefore likely to attract the funding and support we need to continue to build a business for the remaining staff at Acorn. We have spent the last few weeks looking for viable and less risky ways of retaining Phoebe, but decided, sadly, last weekend to stop the development.
It gives me no pleasure to do this - in fact given the other stakeholders (like you) in the Acorn technology it has arguably been one of the toughest decisions of my career.
I know this doesn't do much to help you but I hope it puts in context what otherwise looks like incompetence at best.
Regards
Stan Boland