verification . please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . june 2008 learn how and when to remove this template message coordinates 37 24 50.2 n 121 55 30 w 37.413944 n 121.92500 w 37.413944 ; 121.92500 phoenix technologies ltd. type subsidiary industry software founded 1979 headquarters campbell california key people rich geruson president and chief executive officer products bios securecore securecore tiano trustedcore awardcore awardcore tiano microcore . consumer products failsafe hyperspace driveragent biosagentplus registrywizard undelete plus revenue 67.7 million usd 2009 1 number of employees 300 parent marlin equity partners subsidiaries iolo technologies 2 3 website www.phoenix.com phoenix technologies ltd is an american company that designs develops and supports core system software for personal computers and other computing devices . the company s products commonly referred to as bios basic input output system or firmware support and enable the compatibility connectivity security and management of the various components and technologies used in such devices . phoenix technologies and ibm developed the el torito standard . phoenix was incorporated in massachusetts in september 1979 and its headquarters are in campbell california . 4 contents 1 products 1.1 failsafe 1.2 hyperspace 1.3 driveragent 1.4 biosagentplus 1.5 registrywizard 1.6 phoenix freeze 1.7 undeleteplus 2 history 2.1 cloning the ibm pc bios 2.2 1987 1989 2.3 1990s 2.4 2001 2003 2.5 2005 2008 2.6 2009 2010 3 see also 4 references 5 external links products edit phoenix sells its products primarily to computer and component device manufacturers . the company also provides training consulting maintenance and engineering services to its customers . phoenix also designs develops and supports software products and services for pcs and mobile devices intended to enhance device utility reliability and security . although the consumers of these products and services are enterprises governments service providers and individuals phoenix typically licenses these products to original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers for resale to end users . 5 phoenix competes for sales primarily with in house research and development r & d departments of pc and component manufacturers such as dell inc. hewlett packard company toshiba corporation apple inc. and intel . phoenix also competes for sales with other independent suppliers including american megatrends inc. a privately held u.s. company and insyde software corp. a public company based and listed in taiwan . failsafe edit phoenix failsafe is a theft deterrence product and service designed to protect track and manage lost or stolen mobile computing devices and the data on those devices . pc owners can remotely retrieve and erase the content stored on their mobile pcs and remotely disable the device if necessary . basic elements include a pc agent an internet connected command and control center and a web based management interface . 6 it aims to allow users to tell the location of their monitored pcs with the ability to kill pcs with an sms text message to protect their digital data subject . 7 lenovo uses the technology in its line of 2009 thinkpad notebooks . 8 hyperspace edit phoenix hyperspace is an instant on linux based 9 operating system . 10 it is an application environment that can run either independently or side by side with a traditional operating system such as red hat linux . users are able to boot their personal computers in seconds and immediately browse the internet and perform other web based activities . it s intended to allow mobile pcs to work more like smartphones . 11 driveragent edit driveragent is a device driver update service and part of phoenix s esupport.com line . it scans pcs or notebooks and identifies hardware and outdated drivers with the help of a database of driver update files . biosagentplus edit biosagentplus updates the system bios and device drivers . biosagentplus is part of phoenix s esupport.com line . unlike most other supports esupport charges its customers for updating its products . phoenix technology s home page directly links to the third party website and notes that customers will be charged for updating . 12 registrywizard edit registrywizard is an tool for correcting errors in the windows registry on computers running microsoft windows . it attempts to remove third party software that may have caused the system to run slowly . consumers receive a registry report detailing harmful system conflicts and errors . registrywizard is part of phoenix s esupport.com line . phoenix freeze edit phoenix freeze is a product for laptops and netbooks running microsoft windows that combines with a bluetooth enabled smartphone to provide a proximity locking system which automatically locks a laptop whenever a person walks away from it with a bluetooth enabled smartphone . when the smartphone returns within a certain proximity of the laptop that is pre defined it automatically unlocks the laptop . undeleteplus edit undeleteplus restores deleted files . it can also recover files that have been emptied from the windows recycle bin permanently deleted files within windows using the shift delete shortcut and files that have been deleted from within cmd . users can also restore files that had been deleted from a flash memory drive . undeleteplus is part of phoenix s esupport.com line . history edit in 1979 neil colvin formed what was then called phoenix software associates after his prior employer xitan went out of business . neil hired dave hirschman a former xitan employee . during 1980 1981 they rented office space for the first official phoenix location at 151 franklin street boston massachusetts . in this same time period phoenix purchased a non exclusive license for seattle computer products 86 dos . phoenix developed customized versions of 86 dos or sometimes called pdos for phoenix dos for various microprocessor platforms . phoenix also provided pmate as a replacement for edlin as the dos file editor . phoenix also developed c language libraries called pforce along with plink 86 plink 86plus overlay linkers and pfix 86 a windowed debugger for dos . these products only provided a small revenue stream to phoenix during the early 1980s and the company did not significantly expand in size . cloning the ibm pc bios edit after the success of the ibm pc many companies began making pc clones . some like compaq developed their own compatible rom bios but others violated copyright by directly copying the pc s bios . after apple computer inc. v. franklin computer corp. ibm sued companies that it claimed infringed ibm s copyright . clone manufacturers needed a legal fully compatible bios . 13 14 15 to develop a legal bios phoenix used a clean room technique . engineers read the bios source listings in the ibm technical reference manuals . they wrote technical specifications for the bios apis for a single separate engineer one with experience programming the texas instruments tms9900 not the intel 8088 or 8086 who had not been exposed to ibm bios source code . the single engineer developed code to mimic the bios apis . by recording the audit trail of the two groups interactions phoenix developed a defensibly non infringing ibm pc compatible rom bios . because the programmers who wrote the phoenix code never read ibm s reference manuals nothing they wrote could have been copied from ibm s code no matter how closely the two matched . 14 15 this reverse engineering technique is commonly referred to as a chinese wall . the first phoenix pc rom bios was introduced in may 1984 and greatly increased growth in the pc industry as companies no longer had to develop their own bios . phoenix licensed the bios to clone makers for 290 000 . to reassure customers the company obtained a 2 million insurance policy from the hartford against copyright infringement lawsuits . 14 the availability of an ibm pc compatible rom bios helped fuel the 70 % increase in sales that phoenix experienced in 1988 ; citation needed competitors appeared such as ami bios . 15 phoenix also developed ibm personal system 2 micro channel bios including the abios 16 17 18 and eisa compatible bios during 1988 and 1989 . 19 1987 1989 edit this section does not cite any sources . please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . april 2013 learn how and when to remove this template message in 1987 phoenix began the first of many expansion acquisition and collapse cycles . it acquired softstyle inc and softset inc and began a printer emulation product line and a phoenix publishing division . phoenix also tripled the number of employees from late 1986 to 1989 . phoenix launched an ipo in june 1988 and made the founder and early employees instant millionaires on paper . the stock price did not sustain its peak of 18 and by late 1989 it had plummeted to 3 . in addition phoenix posted a loss of 7.7 million dollars in 1989 due primarily to the consolidation of the pc market and phoenix s unsuccessful branching out into collateral markets . after that ron fisher took over as ceo and phoenix again focused on the core pc bios products and prevented a hostile takeover bid by norwood partners limited partnership . 1990s edit by 1992 phoenix was financially healthy enough to start another expansion and acquisition cycle . in 1992 phoenix acquired quadtel a leading bios supplier . the quadtel bios code base was newer than the original phoenix rom bios code base and the development effort switched to the quadtel products . it was rebranded as phoenixbios . the original rom bios code base was used on a joint development effort with david keenan at ibm called surepath but phoenix did no further development work on the original code . phoenix also expanded its presence in foreign markets . in 1993 phoenix acquired sri kk a phoenix distributor and formed the phoenix kk japanese subsidiary . in addition the offices in taipei and europe were expanded in size . in 1994 phoenix acquired guildford surrey uk based dip research ltd. and continued to expand european operations who had previously developed the dip dos operating system for the dip pocket pc aka atari portfolio in 1989 . in 1996 phoenix acquired virtual chips inc. a maker of synthesizable cores for pc peripherals and mountain view california based award software in 1998 . due to these expansions phoenix reduced its global work force by 5 % by ending 38 jobs . 20 2001 2003 edit this section does not cite any sources . please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . april 2013 learn how and when to remove this template message phoenix continued to grow steadily from the late 1990s and saw a significant increase in revenues from the y2k product refreshes in the pc industry . however by mid 2001 the pc industry suffered another downturn and phoenix was forced to reduce the less profitable product lines such as the ia 64 effort and close a number of redundant offices . phoenix again focused on the core bios business for the next few years . during late 2002 and 2003 phoenix began to develop specialized firmware based applications . these applications often had components embedded in the bios that allowed them to function in damaged pc systems . these included security applications for password hiding and authentication pc backup and recovery applications and basic diagnostic applications . several applications were obtained through complete acquisitions of other companies such as the speke technology from integrity sciences or the browser technology from ravisent . the pc bios business continued its steady but slow growth despite a rapidly declining unit price . the award product line was focused on the low margin high volume desktop product line while the phoenix trustedcore bios was primarily successful in the high