Geoworks announces deal with Brother

GEOS SELECTED BY BROTHER FOR INFORMATION APPLIANCES; GEOWORKS CONTINUES TO ATTRACT LEADING OEM PARTNERS

ALAMEDA, Calif., Oct. 25, 1994 - Geoworks (NASDAQ/NMS: GWRX) today announced at the annual American Electronic Association meeting in Monterey, Calif., that Brother International Corporation has selected the compact, object-oriented GEOS operating system for a sophisticated new family of information appliances.

According to Brother, this strategic partnership was formed with Geoworks because the GEOS operating system can be easily and quickly customized to fulfill Brother's strategy of establishing leading positions in multiple international markets.

Brother is another in a growing list of leading worldwide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to announce that it has adopted GEOS system software for its consumer computing devices (CCDs). Among the others that have adopted GEOS are Casio and Tandy for their personal digital assistants, Sharp Electronics for its new PT-9000 personal information assistant, and IBM EduQuest for its SchoolView family of PC products designed specifically for the K-12 education markets.

"Brother is targeting the rapidly growing high-end segment of the information processing market that requires products rich in graphic functions and are easily affordable to a broad cross-section of consumers," said Gordon Mayer, Geoworks president and chief executive officer. "GEOS is ideal for this type of consumer product as it provides a unique combination of ease-of-use, high performance and low cost."

Geoworks is the first independent software vendor to supply Brother with a graphical solution for its products. To date, Brother had developed its own proprietary character-based system software. Along with the GEOS operating system and flexible user interface, Geoworks is licensing a suite of graphical applications to Brother.

"The market for information processing products is changing at an incredibly rapid pace and we needed to align ourselves with a partner that can help us get new, higher functionality products to market more quickly," said Roger Nakagawa, sr. vice president, Brother International Corporation. " We evaluated numerous options and determined GEOS is the superior solution."

For Geoworks, the alliance with Brother marks another major milestone in its quest to establish GEOS as a leading operating system platform for consumer computing devices such as mobile computers, smart phones and interactive TV.

Establishing partnerships with the world's leading computer hardware vendors, independent software developers, communication services providers and mass market distributors is a primary component of Geoworks' business strategy. Geoworks is pleased that Brother has joined Geoworks as a strategic partner.

To date, Geoworks has established relationships with America Online, Canon Business Machines, Inc., Casio Computer Co., Ltd., CompuServe, Inc. IBM EduQuest, Motorola, Inc., Sharp Corporation, Tandy Corporation and Toshiba Corporation. In addition, Hewlett-Packard Company and Novell, Inc., have made significant equity investments in the company.

Geoworks develops and markets operating system and application software for the emerging consumer computing device (CCD) market. CCDs include mobile devices, information appliances and set-top boxes for interactive television.