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03.02.2002 - 04:23: GeoWorks

Geoworks throws in towel and puts GEOS up for sale By ComputerWire Posted: 31/01/2002 at 10:34 GMT

Wireless software pioneer Geoworks Corp has thrown in the towel, giving up hope of developing its AirBoss application platform technology and has put it up for sale along with the source code for its GEOS and GEOS-SC operating systems. The Alameda, California-based company said the wireless infrastructure market is "very weak" and, while it will eventually be significant as enterprises adopt mobile data applications, Geoworks simply does not have the financial resources to support development of the AirBoss platform and wait for the market to emerge. The company, a pioneer in the development of operating systems for handheld devices, wants to sell the AirBoss team and transfer the technology to a company "that has the resources to weather current market conditions."

But president and CEO Dave Grannan warned: "Of course, we cannot guarantee that we can find an appropriate buyer." The company's greatest moment of fame came in 2000 when it claimed much of the intellectual property behind WAP, and demanded license fees from developers. However, this fizzled out when it reached a settlement with Openwave Systems Inc in January 2001.

Geoworks is a sad example of an organization that was ahead of its time in that it saw the arrival of portable devices ahead of the pack but its early appearance meant that it OS lacked the "future proofness" of later software. Lacking the muscle of Microsoft or the advanced features of Symbian's OS, the writing was on the wall when Nokia dumped GEOS in favor of Symbian.

Geoworks' capitulation was inevitable given pitiful and declining revenue and losses that have brought the company to its knees. In the third quarter to December 31, it recorded a net loss of $13.9m, up from a loss of $7.1m on revenue of $4m, down from $4.2m. For the nine months the loss was $41.6m, up from a loss of $14.8m on revenue of $9.2m, down from $11.7m. To reduce the cash burn, it will lay off 40 people, or 45 per cent of its workforce, from the AirBoss and headquarters staff and will move its headquarters to smaller premises.

For the future it plans to continue as a professional services firm, though this produced only $1.7m of revenue in the last quarter, or 43.2 per cent of the total and was down on the $2.1m a year earlier. AirBoss, which offers support for the RIM, Palm, Pocket PC, Windows CE and Windows 98. 2000/NT platforms, has wider support, but is a long way from being a money-spinner. Ironically Geoworks' web site warns that the industry is constantly abuzz with news of start-ups and promising technology. "But when you're staking your business on a strategic initiative like mobile communications, there is no room for risk. Geoworks has staying power," it says.

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03.02.2002 - 13:19: Re: GeoWorks

Hallo, das ist alles schon etwas verwirrend, erst erwirbt BreadBox eine Lizenz für Geos von GeoWorks, kurz darauf will GeoWorks den Sourcecode ihrer Produkte komplett verkaufen. Nun zumindest verspicht es, dass es in der Geos-Szene wieder spannend wird, hoffen wir das Beste.

Gruss Jirka

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03.02.2002 - 15:33: Re: GeoWorks

Hi, ich habe die Quellenangaben vergessen:
http://www.osnews.com/

Hierhin sollten wir durchaus selbst News senden. Es wird dort, wie ich meine extrem gut, von allen Betriebssystemen berichtet, leider nicht von NDO (ist ja nur ein DOS Aufsatz, aber das kann nicht gelten).

Es gibt dort auch Diskussionsforen für GEOS etc. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23893.html

Der Original Artikel:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=590

Die bisherigen Kommentare auf osnews zum Thema:

Geoworks Throws in Towel and Puts GEOS up for Sale By Eugenia Loli-Queru, based on submission by Jean-Baptiste Queru - Posted on 2002-01-31 18:44:34
"Wireless software pioneer Geoworks Corp has thrown in the towel, giving up hope of developing its AirBoss application platform technology and has put it up for sale along with the source code for its GEOS and GEOS-SC operating systems. The Alameda, California-based company said the wireless infrastructure market is "very weak" and, while it will eventually be significant as enterprises adopt mobile data applications, Geoworks simply does not have the financial resources to support development of the AirBoss platform and wait for the market to emerge."

Read the rest of the story at TheRegister. Post a new comment AlienSoldier (IP: 142.169.67.---) wrote on 2002-01-31 20:51:48 This is another case of bad management. A company should document itself well enough to be able to go into hibernation by dramaticaly scale down until market condition of required missing technology (most time, relating to manufacturing cost) came up. -------------- Anonymous (IP: 64.229.105.---) wrote on 2002-01-31 21:36:05 There is no market condition for WAP browser technology --- WAP was a dead-on-arrival technology. -------------- yc (IP: ---.nyc.rr.com) wrote on 2002-01-31 21:39:42 >>This is another case of bad management. Easy to pass judgement ain't it? >>A company should document itself... Easier said than done! I hope they find a buyer but it's gonna be tough. The fact that MSFT, Symbian, and Palm are superior doesn't help any. ciao yc ------------- Rob (IP: ---.cvx33-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net) wrote on 2002-01-31 23:29:34 Back in the day ... I remember GEOS back in the day. Worked kinda like Win3.1 running over DOS. (That part of it is now repackaged as New Deal Office, which is a pretty slick package for your old boxen.) Also, GEOS was kind of a pioneer in this type of technology. Anyone remember when the Nokia Communicator 9000 first came out? Remember seeing Val Kilmer use it in The Saint? That was pretty slick back in the day, albeit old now, and not moving as fast as the other competitors in the field are. It's a shame to see them go, but I think we ought to acknowledge they technology they had, and for being one of the first. In my eyes, they rank up there with QSSL (i.e. QNX), Palm, and Amiga for being some awesome companies. Some are still making advances, and others fell behind. -- Rob ------------ Rev Aaron (IP: ---.d.umn.edu) wrote on 2002-02-01 00:05:19 GEOS used to be pretty rad I used to use GEOS back in the days of Win 3.1. Compared to Win 3.1, it used a lot less RAM, was 100x more stable, was generally faster, and wasn't quite so damn ugly. I remember there even being an AOL GUI client for it. Alas! ------------ Felonious Hiddenbottom (IP: ---.bct.bellsouth.net) wrote on 2002-02-01 00:07:07 >kinda like Win3.1 running over DOS Nah, more like Windows 95 and Office 95 over DOS. In reality, GEOS / New Deal actually used less of DOS than Windows 9x does. The only use GEOS had for DOS was the file system structure - You basically could have installed it, and had it work (nearly) flawlessy on a hard disk drive that had ben partitioned FAT 16, and formatted using the /s switch. Try that with 3.x. Most OS afficiandos (including myself) Consider it to be a full-fledged OS. Too bad that Geoworks never had the to compete with Microsoft. Like another company we all knew and loved - they moved into a nascent market much too soon, completely ignoring their desktop customers, and paid the price. Sure, the OS survived and improved as New Deal Office, but it still is a 16 bit OS today. A remarkable piece of engineering in its' time, but a dinosaur today. Rumor has it that a 32-bit version exists, but no one that I know has ever seen it. I'd just love to get my hands on that source code, tweak it, and recompile it for 32 bit processors. And port open office. Oh well, just a pipe dream ------------ Ed (IP: 155.246.1.---) wrote on 2002-02-01 00:12:01 Geoworks has ALWAYS been mismanaged. They kept changing their focus so many times over the years. It's probably been 5-6 years since they've touched the GEOS code. They're selling it because everyone that licensed the code from them either moved on to something else (Nokia) or went out of business (NewDeal, MyTurn...). Yeah, Breadbox (www.breadbox.com) just licensed it from them, but they're such a small company that they probably got the license for pennies. And I don't think anyone ever cared about GEOS-SC (which had nothing in common with GEOS other than the name); the only surprise is they waited this long to try to sell it. [Background info: I've written code for most GEOS platforms, had an internship offer from Geoworks when I was in high school, and worked for Breadbox, NewDeal, and MyTurn over the past 7 years or so...] ------------ Hexley (IP: ---.turner.com) wrote on 2002-02-01 00:16:10 C128 What sad news. I used GEOS on my Commodore 128. It's similarities to Classic Macs are amazing. There is no market condition for WAP browser technology --- WAP was a dead-on-arrival technology Mostly true, the market is dominated by two companies Nokia and OpenWave. In my opinion OpenWave makes the best browsers (UP.Browser). There's more to wireless than WAP though, you have PDAs, iMode/e-plus, and wap. I think GEOS was an attempt to apply PDA like technology to phones which generally doesn't work well though the Handspring Treo is looking promising. -----------

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Ed (IP: 155.246.1.---) wrote on 2002-02-01 00:26:28 >>Sure, the OS survived and improved as New Deal Office, but it still is a 16 bit OS today. A remarkable piece of engineering in its' time, but a dinosaur today. Rumor has it that a 32-bit version exists, but no one that I know has ever seen it. Work was in progress to run in protected mode, but MyTurn and NewDeal both ran out of money about a year ago, so that killed development. The system booted up in protected mode, and I know the browser worked. I didn't hear about anything else, I just know a lot of things were getting tweaked. >>I'd just love to get my hands on that source code, tweak it, and recompile it for 32 bit processors. And port open office. Oh well, just a pipe dream It's not just a tweak or recompile. 95% of the code tree is in assembly; the internet apps are all in C, but other than that there isn't much in C. And everything was REALLY tightly coded to run well in 640k, so, its not easy upgrading it. But the code was REALLY well written. It was a pleasure to work on, much more so than most code I've seen for other OS's, regardless of the language. ------------- Felonious Hiddenbottom (IP: ---.bct.bellsouth.net) wrote on 2002-02-01 02:15:37 >>It's not just a tweak or recompile. 95% of the code tree is in assembly. Ouch. I just assumed it was C code - it's a bitch to do GUI stuff in assembly. Guess I just assumed. And you know what that means.... ------------- the jimbo (IP: 195.22.198.---) wrote on 2002-02-01 11:35:01 BeOS source code! now let's put some links to the source code! i wanna look at it. i would really appreciate any help thanks! ------------ Ed (IP: ---.cc.stevens-tech.edu) wrote on 2002-02-01 16:31:40 >> Ouch. I just assumed it was C code - it's a bitch to do GUI stuff in assembly. Guess I just assumed. And you know what that means.... Actually, it's not. Geoworks wrote their own assembler that pisses all over NASM or anything else I've seen. It makes asm coding a lot easier. Got good support for structs, plus, they added OO for the GUI stuff. You can predeclare your UI objects in the source, in a nice really easy syntax. Trust me, GEOS coding in assembly is much easier than working with MFC. Felonious Hiddenbottom (IP: ---.bct.bellsouth.net) wrote on 2002-02-01 17:44:53 Damn, Ed. You sure know your GEOS Stuff. Maybe we should chip in and license the source code. I'd love to see a modern GEOS. ------------ Helmar (IP: ---.saix.net) wrote on 2002-02-02 16:46:34 Couldn't resist! Ed, it's a real pleasure "meeting" you again. I had my hands in GEOS back in 1995-1997, trying to redistribute it in S. Africa, but the people in charge of the code were never the brightest when it came to marketing. Common malaise, I hasten to add. GEOS lacked a proper visual IDE, and the 16bit-ness didn't help either. And when Nokia dropped it in favour of Symbian, the writing was on the wall. I largely agree with Ed, because from a user perspective GEOS offered the most consistent and friendly computing experience, with 4 user levels, a coherent and really neat UI, many features only found in high-end apps, and well... on a 486 with 32MB RAM I ran it on a RAM disk at a speed that you know... Safely referencing documents, fonts and help files to the had disk via 3 lines in the GEOS.INI, the thing was a speed daemon second to none!

It's one of the really sad examples in OS history, because it was ways ahead of Windows and other operating systems, but bad marketing, insufficient developer support and lack of adoption by OEMs eventually killed it. I don't know what Breadbox wants to do to remove all these bottlenecks and catch up, even if their target market remains the low end and schools, but all strengths to them!

Helmar