Acorn licensing plans cut losses to £1.1m

Acorn Group has slashed its half year losses from £4m in 1996 to £1.1m in 1997. The results reflect the transformation of Acorn's core business from educational PC supplier to technology developer and licensor.

"Development and licensing activities, which only started at the beginning of 1996, accounted for 40 per cent of our total revenues in the first half of 1997. The results we have obtained by working with clients such as BT, NTT and Oracle are impressive. We are now considered to be a key player in the merging Internet industry and will continue to develop strategic partnerships to reinforce this position," said David Lee, Acorn's managing director.

Customised versions of Acorn's award winning technologies have already been licensed to Net Products, Olivetti, Proton, RCA/Thomson, SemiTech Corporation, Samsung, Casio, NTT, Raytheon and others. In the hardware server market Acorn's partners include Sun, nCube, Digital and ICL and in the telecoms business Alcatel, Ericsson, Siemens and Orange.

For the six months ended June 1997 Acorn's turnover dropped by £2.3m to £14.2m.

This article first appeared in Electronics Weekly,
Wednesday 15th October 1997