Virgin Mobile USA to purchase Helio
Written by admin on June 30th, 2008 in gadgets.
The death bell had been ringing for Helio for awhile, especially ever since Earthlink made the announcement that it was no longer going to sink any money into the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). Now the latest news is that Virgin Mobile USA will acquire Helio.
Virgin is also an MVNO meaning that the company does not own any infrastructure or spectrum to offer wireless services. Instead, all of its wireless services are purchased from another major wireless carrier.
Helio had to be an attractive catch for Virgin considering the company was in serious financial trouble; and SK Telecom was having to continue to pump cash into the company to keep it afloat.
Virgin and Helio had a very similar business model; which included marketing of services to young adults. In some respects Helio was a competitor to Virgin so the acquisition of the company helps to ensure their future success with the young wireless market.
The guys over at SK Telecom and Earthlink are probably estatic that the disaster that Helio was is no longer going to be their problem. Earthlink really left SK Telecom holding the bag when it decided to pull out of future funding all together.
You have to at least give Earthlink a little bit of credit. They knew their dial-up Internet business was going away and that they would have to transform their business model. Unfortunately, Helio just wasn’t the big success that Earthlink and SK Telecom thought it would be.
Read more from the Helio website.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!