Garry Hare Speech

Given at the Amiwest 2004 Banquet, July

I will make a few remarks and couple of announcements perhaps that you'll find interesting; on the website they were characterized as special, I don't know if they are that special. Then toward the end we have a question and answer session.

For about a year we have been looking at objectives of both the wired and wireless operators and trying to take a look at what is going to drive the business models behind them. I think it safe to say that future devices will be internet mobile devices. The next wave of this internet revolution is dramatically changing what we call the internet today. Devices are rapidly all converging over to the traditional internet and increasingly consumers expect instant access to any content played on any device transmitted over any network and stored anywhere in the world. This expectation requires easy access to digital data, to voice and video and to and from the home, the office or any mobile location. We see this as the next wave revolution in data access and connectivity and we think that it clearly requires a parallel revolution in both software and operating systems.

All current OS's are designed to compute and manipulate data through a stand alone desktop computer and/or server. These desktop OS's become increasingly large, slow and worse susceptible to virus attacks and spontaneous crashes. They are bloated and cannot be easily used on devices such as smart phones, gaming consoles, PDAs, STBs and embedded devices. This results in technical and market fragmentation as vertical OS designed for specific devices are incompatible and mutually inoperable. I was in Asia recently and they believe that mobile devices driven by set top boxes are where the market is going. The problem is large incompatible OS systems that don't work at all on mobile devices used right now -- let alone STB market. Against this backdrop KMOS was formed to provide a radical solution. A simple device multimedia OS adapting itself to any device, any network. This OS would not only control a given device that would enable it to be connected to other devices or networks bringing the full power of internet to any device, any where, any time.

The required operating system for the future market must be small, fast, robust and not crash or be susceptible to virus, must offer intuitive user interface, support instant on/off connectivity to internet, be peer to peer communication capable and must run multimedia applications. We think that AmigaOS is the best OS ever developed for this purpose. It meets many of these requirements and with continuing development it can meet all these objectives. Future mobile phones from wireless providers can do many things that traditional devices currently do such as making calls, enables email, plays games, accesses enabled websites, takes photographs, reading barcodes, downloading and playing music. This contains a chip from Sony that enables users to pay for groceries, serves as personal ID, operates appliances, buys tickets and act as keys. There are security problems that they are working on ATM. Phones can be used for digital rights management for example, TV programs billed through phones. All your credit cards, loyalty cards, money and keys can be built into a phone. These future phones can be even be wrapped in solar film recharged by sunlight by leaving them on a window sill, even laptops can benefit. To better participate in this wireless future, KMOS has a few announcements to make in advance of press releases:

Announcements

  1. KMOS recently acquired Helsinki based, Capacity Networks Inc- they specialize in data storage technology that stores and retrieves files from any device on any given network. Secure data storage is critically important in the home, small business environments. Interesting for the mobile future. They also have proprietary technology that enables efficient transmission of data -- it reads your historical data and figures out the most efficient route across the internet. This technology can be up to 15% more efficient in some tests. When we told our business partners this they were very excited.
  2. We have now acquired Amiga Inc. We finished this acquisition in the last few days. There are several reasons for it: we have a responsibility for building a brand and we need control over it. I have said numerously that the most interesting thing about the Amiga is the talented and capable development community -- we will support the development community with time and money. In short term we will focus on Amiga's DE products and we will announce extensions to it and move DE into the market immediately. We will pay developer community to make applications. It is our intention to build Amiga brand and enter into relationships with as many strategic partners as possible.

I don't talk about product roadmaps or things that haven't happened yet. I won't violate confidentiality agreements with companies that I talk to and I don't expect the same back.

We don't have a KMOS website because we don't need one and we want to keep a low profile even now as we do deals --however we have all the Amiga websites now and these will be rekindled (especially the developer site) and will communicate Amiga specific information through them.

Questions from the Amiwest audience

Gary Hare on advertising:
There is a difference between advertising and product marketing. We will support products from a branding point of view. We don't intend in being in the hardware business. We have to know how we manage our brand.
What can I say about personnel and staffing?
We have made offers and hired some Amiga Inc. employee and some that have not. We have about a dozen employees and the same number of contractors. I will grow that by up to 80% but not more in the next quarter.
What about desktops?
If the OS is done properly like OS4, the OS has to be able to migrate to desktops as well as mobiles. Developers don't use PDA's and mobiles to develop! There is a traditional user base that can be grown but let's be realistic -- the only way to sustain the desktop is to be successful in other markets.