Geoworks Corp, the Alameda, California-based smart phone operating system company said Tuesday that it’s still being held back by the slow take-up of smart phone technology, leading it to report disappointing first quarter results. Net losses for the three months through June were $5.2m, wider than expected but lower than last year’s $5.8m loss. Meanwhile, revenues fell 21% to $1.5m as the company failed to generate new license deals for its GEOS operating system. The company now anticipates further losses through to at least March 1999, and in an attempt to stem the negative cash flows, newly appointed CEO David Thatcher has instigated what he calls ‘an expense reduction program and revised strategic plan’; part of which saw the re-appointment to the board of founder and former chairman, Brian Dougherty as of Tuesday morning. Geoworks has frequently complained of a slower than anticipated demand for smart phones, with devices such as the Nokia 9000 communicator, which runs the GEOS operating system, failing to sell in significant volumes. And last month, Geoworks learned that even these meager revenues would disappear by the fourth quarter as Nokia changed course and threw in its lot with Symbian Ltd, a joint venture formed to promote the rival operating system Epoch 32 from UK-based Psion Plc (CI No 3,439). Geoworks has only just finished porting its operating system to run on chips from ARM Plc when the formation of Symbian was announced. And while ARM’s RISC chips are widely used in GSM mobile phones, creating new market potential, this is already the home territory of Epoch 32, making it even tougher for GEOS to get a foothold. David Thatcher holds the contrary view that Symbian will be good news for Geoworks in the longer term because of the boost it will give to the smartphone market, but with Epoch and Window CE already in contention, GEOS look increasingly vulnerable. á
