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Helio figures out how to make more money, still needs to learn how to turn a profit

By: , IntoMobile
Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 3:37 PM

Helio posts greater losses as revenues increase - Helio is bleedingForget turning a profit, Helio needs to figure out how to stop bleeding cash (much like Sprint). On the upside, Helio’s fiscal 2007 revenues were $171 million, up from $46 million in 2006. But, what good is taking in more money when you’re burning greenbacks at a significantly faster rate?

Not much.

Helio posted a loss of $326 million in 2007, compared to $192 million in 2006. Albeit, Helio did increase their advertising out-go, but with $47.5 million advertising dollars in 2007, their advertising costs only increased about $25 million (from $21.6 million in 2006). In fact, Helio’s losing money so fast that once-parent Earthlink had to relinquish control of the MVNO venture to SK Telecom, the other parent company that helped start Helio. 

Can Helio last? Time will tell. But, if history is any sort of predictor, MVNOs aren’t going to fare too well.

We can’t imagine Helio has more than another year and half to prove themselves (or run out of funding).

[Via: RCRNews]

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About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • reptile18

    the blood leaking off the Helio logo should turn into dollar signs($) :)

  • Christian

    Revenue grew by nearly 4x (faster than forecast), but losses less than doubled. This is an expensive game to be in, and nobody expected Helio to be profitable yet – but it looks like the gap toward profitability is closing quicker than they expected. If revenue keeps growing at the rate it currently is, and losses keep slowing, proportional to that revenue growth = good things.

    Plus, with a parent company willing to throw down $5 BILLION into Sprint, a few hundred million is peanuts. Keep at it, Helio!

  • Droideka

    Sk telecom is the biggest wireless company in South Korea, and their service is very similar with VZW
    (High price, but CDMA)
    Some of Koreans blame SK Telecom because the money which helps Helio is come from Korean customer’s pocket. In addition, Korean customers of SKT should pay about 2 or 3 times of money if they buy same phones as helio… even they are downgraded phone..!
    (same as HTC TyTn II and AT&T Tilt… Tilt has no front-side camera :D )