i-mate chops US operations down to bare minimum - massive layoffs
By Will Park on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 3:01 PM PST In Announcements, Financial, i-mate
We’ve been waiting for i-mate to get their Ultimate lineup up and running for some time now. The Ultimate devices are ready to rock, but delays and carrier resistance has caused i-mate to miss its target window for a US launch.
i-mate was banking on the Ultimate lineup of handsets
bringing them out of the semi-obscurity they’ve always enjoyed and into the global limelight. Their Ultimate devices are impressive (if a bit homely), but it’s been a long time in getting those devices out to the public. In fact, it seems that it’s been too long in coming.
With costs mounting and revenues failing to keep up, i-mate has reportedly served pink-slips to most of its US division. Last Friday, i-mate chopped the entire engineering, QA, and tech writing departments off the i-mate payroll - leaving only a barebones staff to run the i-mate online portal in hopes of more US-sales. Even the Chief Software Officer and VP of Sales and Marketing took a walk after the massive employee firing on Friday.
The Ultimate 8502 and Ultimate 9502 are serious players in a crowded smartphone market, we hope i-mate stays around long enough in the US to prove themselves.
[Via: Engadget Mobile]
Massive? How many people / what percentage? If you’re a journalist and not a tabloid, you’d at least have some figures right? Engadget doesn’t seem to know, either.
inimical
The issue really stems back to basics. imate is not an OEM and aspire to be but really have no idea what that really means. HTC obviously did all the real heavy lifting and imate’s position since the disolve of that relationship makes it really clear.
If the CEO would put his arrogance and ego aside for a few minutes and allow the leadership team to manage their areas of responsibility while hiring the right competencies necessary to develop solid products and deliver them to market they may stand a chance.
[Edited for slander]
Bottomline, they are not people with integrity and treat their “staff” as “expendable” They both need to step aside if this company has a chance in hell.
They sacked ~12 people (40%)
Hey indknow, do you know any of the affected people? I work for a large company that’s looking for people with their backgrounds. I haven’t had much luck getting in contact.
The CEO (Jim Morrison) is a fool and a liar.
I (and a few colleagues) used to work for I-mate when they were based in Glasgow. My boss actually got sacked for being off sick ONCE! How bad is that?!
Mr Morrison has previous for this kind of behaviour, and for his terribly poor treatment of staff — and, at one point, I was actually physically assaulted by him for daring to stand up to him. The chap is an utter disgrace, in my opinion.
Honestly — he is an embarassment to all of us decent scottish people!