Acorn Education will build progressively on Acorn's education market leadership and strong brand reputation to increase its UK market share. Although overall staffing levels will be reduced within the Acorn Group, the number of staff dedicated exclusively to education will increase. Acorn Education will continue to focus on the sale of RISC OS based computers, but will seek to reduce Acorn's dependence on hardware sales only by providing schools with a broader range of value-added services, software and specialist products based on other industry standard technologies. Mike O'Riordan, sales & marketing director of Acorn Computers Ltd (ACL), will head Acorn Education.
Applied Risc Technologies will design and develop advanced products based on ARM technology. It will continue to develop for Acorn Education but will also seek opportunities with leading OEMs to exploit its expertise in silicon integration and hardware and software design based predominantly on the ARM microprocessor. Applied Risc Technologies, will be headed by Peter Bondar, who has recently joined the ACL board as technical director.
As a result of the restructuring approximately 50 positions have been made redundant. During the next month, Acorn will be interviewing those whose positions have become redundant to help them find alternative employment internally or elsewhere.