Sprint acquires Virgin Mobile, looking to grow in prepaid phones
Sprint announced today that it’s acquiring Virgin Mobile USA in an effort to bring on more customers for its prepaid mobile phones. The deal adds up to $483 million, including the 13.1 percent of Virgin that Sprint already owns.
Sprint says it will merge Virgin with its Boost Mobile prepaid phone division, and will put Virgin chief executive Dan Schulman in charge of its overall prepaid business. With the economy causing more people to be budget… Continue Reading
Virgin Mobile buys (once) high-flying Helio for $50M, as mobile consolidation begins
Virgin Mobile USA has agreed to acquire Helio mobile phone division from SK Telecom and Earthlink for an investment that totals $50 million.
The deal is part of a consolidation trend in mobile. Nokia this week agreed to buy Symbian, the mobile phone software maker, for $329 million. And Microsoft agreed yesterday to buy Portugal’s Mobicomp. Mobicomp is a mobile software company specializing in the storage and backup of data.
The deal ends a high-profile attempt by… Continue Reading
Roundup: Virgin Mobile acquires Helio, Starbucks to stop music sales and more
Here’s the latest action:
New partnership brings Helio to Virgin Mobile — Virgin Mobile USA will acquire the U.S. arm of South korea-based SK Telecom, namely, a mobile operator called Helio, according to the Financial Times. Both mobile operators have been struggling to make money by piggybacking on the infrastructure of existing carriers. This announcement doesn’t offer any sense of how they might bounce back; it just seems loaded with more bad news, like the estimate that… Continue Reading
Roundup: Tidbits on Jangl’s demise, Virgin considers Helio hookup, VCs looking overseas, and more
updated
The back-story on Jangl’s slow death — Yesterday, we reported on Jangl’s asset sale process. A tipster tells us that Seattle-based WhitePages had offered to buy Internet phone company Jangl for $20 million, but then kept the company in diligence for more than a month and walked away at the last minute — giving Jangl no choice to but throw in the towel when it ran out of time and options. Whitepages flew down from Seattle… Continue Reading