GO Corp. and EO Inc. to Join Forces and Become AT&T’s Personal Communicator Company
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — August 13, 1993 — AT&T Friday announced that EO Inc. and GO Corp. intend to merge into a single company with the technologies to deliver the platform of choice for personal communicators.
This represents a major step toward creating a new standard for this emerging market, offering customers a more elegant and compelling solution that can be delivered more quickly.
AT&T became the majority owner of EO in an agreement finalized last month, naming EO as its company for creating personal communicators: pen-based devices that provide fax, electronic mail, telephone and personal computing and productivity capabilities. GO Corp. is the developer of PenPoint, the industry leading mobile operting system for personal communicators. By bringing EO and GO engineers together under one roof, with access to AT&T Bell Laboratories technology, the combined company can best achieve the tight integration of communications functions required for these products.
"What we've done is form one entity, with one technology platform, through which we and our partners can offer the best solution for those who need to stay in touch anywhere, anytime," said Robert Kavner, AT&T executive vice president and CEO for multimedia products and services. "This underscores our commitment to the mobile communications market, and to combining AT&T's Hobbit microprocessor, GO's PenPoint operating system and EO's personal communicator design to meet that need."
The three companies also said their action will accelerate the licensing of their combined technologies as an open platform for other vendors to design personal communicators and related software. Matsushita, NEC, Olivetti and Toshiba already are committed to the Hobbit/PenPoint platform, and more than 2,000 software developers are trained and working on products based on PenPoint.
"Our combined company will continue to work closely with our partners to bring to market the best products possible," said Alain Rossmann, president and chief executive officer of EO, based here. "And it is in our mutual interest to license our technology more broadly in order to expand that market, and to ensure that a variety of personal communicators can interoperate over networks."
Seamless communication between communicators will be assured by Telescript, a programming language for software and communications created by General Magic, a company based here and backed by Apple, AT&T, Matsushita, Motorola, Philips and Sony. EO and GO are working to make Telescript available on PenPoint, and to make it part of the personal communicator platform.
"AT&T has taken a leadership role in bringing these companies together to assure the most compelling product for the marketplace, " said GO president Bill Campbell. Campbell will join EO's board to help assure a smooth integration of software development functions and personnel into the merged company.
Current product plans and customer relationships will remain unchanged by the merger, and the companies said other details will be determined as their agreements are finalized. The agreements also will be subject to EO and GO board approvals.
AT&T, the world's networking leader, provides communications services and products, as well as network equipment and computer systems for businesses, consumers, telecommunications service providers and government.
EO was founded in 1991 by AT&T; the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers; Matsushita and Marubeni. The partners contribute technical and marketing expertise and funding. In addition, EO has announced a strategic relationship with Olivetti, Europe's leading computer manufacturer.
GO Corp., a privately held company in Foster City, Calif., is the developer of PenPoint, the industry leading, communications-intensive operating system for mobile applications.
CONTACT:
AT&T, San Jose, Calif.
Kevin Compton, 408/452-3966 (work)
408/353-3883 (home)
or
EO Inc.
Sharon Miller, 415/904-7070 (ext. 272)
or
GO Corp.,
Mike Homer, 415/358-2070