They went through some difficult times in the '90s as the primary and secondary education market finally started to switch to PCs. Acorn attempted a series of strategic moves and spin-offs including licensing the Network Compter design (5-10 years too early for concept) and Online Media (still waiting for ATM to the home), their keyboardless, touch-screen laptop (10-15 years too early for concept).

They finally bet the future of the Risc-PC product familiy on project Phoebe, a next-generation Risc-PC with more generic hardware. It would appear that the project either fell behind schedule or went over budget. Senior management pulled the project and made one final strategic move - to turn Acorn Computers into a semiconductor design shop on 14th January 1999. The RiscOS intellectual property was sold to Pace Microtech.

Later Element 14 came to be known for low-power DSL chipstets, DSL software and communications technology. They were bought out by Broadcom in 2000.

Meanwhile, RiscOS Ltd was founded and were successful in licensing RiscOS from Pace for destop computers (Pace were only interested in the technology for their satellite and cable set-top boxes). There are a number of companies still making hardware that uses the RiscOS ROM chipset from RiscOS Ltd