Corel drops Linux hardware, announces profit

Corel Corporation, which has been reeling financially for the past year,announced its first profit in five quarters Wednesday as it dropped itsline of Linux hardware. Corel is best known as the current owner of WordPerfect, once the darling of word processing. The company reported a profit of $6.8 million on revenues of $67 million. A year earlier, thecompany lost $67 million.

"We are extremely pleased with the progress we have made as a company in1998," said CEO Michael Cowpland. "We have spent a considerable amount of time streamlining our business practices, and we're proud of how far we have come."

The "streamlining" he's referring to includes the sale of its NetWinderhardware unit, which consists largely of Linux and NC boxes. The companywill be releasing its new WordPerfect Office 2000 suite sometime by mid-summer