Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) have been having one hell of a time over the past year. The biggest burnout among them was Amp’d Mobile, which lost $360M before realizing its customers couldn’t pay their bills.
While Helio rode high for quite some time, that company has also lost Earthlink as an investor, seen CEO Sky Dayton depart, and accumulated a deficit of $560M.
Now Sonopia, an MVNO that enabled communities and organizations to set up their own branded mobile services (so-called “mini-MVNOs”), has also shut down after failing to gain traction.
According to a former business development consultant, Sonopia’s “approach was too ‘involving’ and too ambitious, offering targeted services and campaigns for segmented groups…which often lacked skills in running even a marketing program, let alone a mobile service.” Apparently the inflexibility of Verizon, its parent carrier, and the over-zealous optimism of founder Juha Christensen also led the company to ruin.
Sonopia is now in the TechCrunch DeadPool.
every mobile social network will die. mobile phones are not for social networks, they are for talking and texting. well, smartphones and pda’s are designed for browsing web and more but once you can browse the web you do not need a mobile social network, facebook and many other major networks have mobile versions.
take a look at Google’s dying mobile social network DodgeBall stats here: http://www.alex...amp;size=Medium
Wow, at least I had heard of Amp’d. These guys started in the deadpool is sounds like.
They died becasue that entire gang of sales and bd guys were clueless – I mean downright morons – never understood the world around them and too arrongant to think others might know better. I tried a few times to work with them – but these clowns could not even make their meetings – and cancel out repeatedly – and call back again looking to re-schedule. if that is any indication of their way of doing business – I can only imagine what many of their customers and partners had to say. And not to be forgotten the high profile resume of their founder ceo – i guess in the end that did not really matter if they did not know how to conduct business in this commodity environment – RIP
Whats funny is that you dont even know the link for your own dead pool sub page Mark.. The link for deadpool that you gave in your post (http://www.tech...m/tags/deadpool) points to a 404 error
@Saagar – ack, I always do that – thanks
Please do not forget about Voce another MVNO deadpool company…
I wish I had known about this earlier – I could have used it.
How the heck could they accumulate $560M in debt!! I think some board members were probably paying themselves some golden parachute salaries. It’s great to have a link to your social network – e.g. facebook on your iPhone, but I think this just lacked adequate market research and too much ill conceived optimism for the sake of making hay while the sun shined.
I hope Helio doesn’t end up there as well. I’m not a Helio user, but I appreciate that they’re pushing the envelope more than a lot of other carriers out there.
It is quite clear from this post and that of other failing MVNOs (e.g., recently Movida) that the big carriers have no interest in helping their MVNO “partners” succeed. Too bad the FCC wimped out and dropped the wholeselling provisions from the recent 700 Mhz auction. Open access my ass.