I think the empeg team could probably answer this pretty accurately - IIRC Hugo has an extensive background in Acorn/Archimedes stuff.

Basically the company produced hardware and the RISC-OS operating system until the late 90's when the key education market was eaten up by PC's, despite Acorn's being massively more reliable and resiliant.

It was broken up mainly so that Acorn shareholders could recoup their investment in Arm, which was spin-off from Acorn. (Yes, they invented the Empeg's processor and I doubt this is a coincidence!).

The operating system was sold to Pace Microtech and last time I heard there was a bit of a bust-up over ownership rights. Various hardware is still being produced by third-party companies and there is still a strong niche and enthusiast market.

Gareth (owner of several BBC Micros, an A3010 and a fairly rare BBC Master Compact)