Who would have thought that a mobile phone company aimed at teens, ultra-hipsters and the “Shake Your Junk” crowd wouldn’t have been able to turn a proift?
Well, everyone really, considering that many teens and junk-shakers tend to lack a reliable source of income.
Still, Amp’d Mobile felt they could make their business model work, and as it turns out, they were wrong. Amp’d has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after about two years of selling yesterday’s phones at a loss, and wireless plans that were equally good at losing money. While news sources has tried to put a positive spin on Amp’d’s “solid subscriber growth,” the Mobile Virtual Network Operator currently serves a pithy 200,000 subscribers.
Still, Amp’d is blaming its “rapid growth” on its troubles:
As a result of our rapid growth, our back-end infrastructure was unable to keep up with customer demand. We are taking this step as a necessary and responsible action to sustain and strengthen our momentum in the market place.
At best, that description is a bit vague. Isn’t rapid growth a good thing? The only way I could see Amp’d’s (try saying that out loud) claims on this holding water is if the “infrastructure” was so poor that it prevented rapid growth from happening. Considering Amp’d is basically reselling network services and bandwidth on Verizon Wireless – who has no trouble serving its 60+ million customers – I find this description a little hard to swallow.
At any rate, Amp’d claims it will be able to continue operations in spite of its financial troubles, and eventually exit Chapter 11.
All go, until the massive spending spree was approved…now they don’t quite need to offer $5 plans !! Like the bailout so far?
I don’t enjoy that we had to get INTO the bailout. I do however, enjoy the fact that I still have a job. Thanks for asking. 🙂