Metrowerks was a company that developed software development tools for various embedded, game, handheld, and desktop platforms. Its flagship product, CodeWarrior, comprised an IDE, compilers, linkers, libraries, and related tools. Freescale, its parent company, continues to sell these tools. Founded in 1986 in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, Metrowerks originally developed software development tools for the Atari ST, Apple Macintosh and UNIX workstations. One of its first products was a Modula-2 compiler. It had limited success with these products. In 1992, it began an effort to develop development tools for Macintosh computers based on the newly-announced PowerPC processor. It shipped the first commercial release of CodeWarrior in May 1994 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. The release was a great success. Metrowerks received much credit for helping Apple succeed in its risky transition to a new processor. In March 1994 Metrowerks had its initial public offering, trading under the symbol MTWKF (Nasdaq foreign exchange). Also in 1994, Metrowerks opened a small sales and R&D office in Austin, Texas to be closer to the manufacturers of the new PowerPC chips, IBM and Motorola. Metrowerks would later move its corporate headquarters to Austin. By 1996 Metrowerks had begun expanding its CodeWarrior product line to target platforms besides Macintosh computers, including Palm OS, PlayStation, and Microsoft Windows. In August 1999, Motorola's semiconductor group acquired Metrowerks. In 2003, Motorola spun off its semiconductor group as a separate company named Freescale Semiconductor. In July 2005, they discontinued CodeWarrior for Mac OS. In October 2005, Freescale retired the Metrowerks name but continues to develop CodeWarrior and other developer technologies as part of Freescale's Developer Technology Organization.
