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Modu will cease to exist next month [Is anyone surprised?]

By: , IntoMobile
Monday, January 17th, 2011 at 11:56 PM

Each and every time we had to write an article about Modu it has always left a bad taste in our mouths. From the beginning we knew that the company was created merely to swindle investors out of their money and that the products they showed off not only made very little sense, but were also never going to see the light of day on any store shelf in any territory. As far back as 2008 the company was laying people off, and recently they failed to make their company public, but now we’re finally glad to tell you that we’ll never have to write about Modu again. That’s right, the company is going die. By the time next month Modu will be no more.

Reports out of Israel say that Modu currently owes around $123 million to investors and another $21 million to the Israel Discount Bank. The people who worked there will also have to fight to get their salaries. All because a few guys sitting around a table thought that the concept of a modular mobile phone would be a wild success, when in reality the invention of the SIM card was the best implementation of making it easy for consumers to pick the devices they want.

Operators will soon transition to microSIM cards and that’ll enable form factors that are even sexier than the ones we have today. Modu devices on the other hand needed to be slipped inside a bulky shell. The goal for Modu was more to create an ecosystem around their proprietary dock connector, similar to how Apple has done, than to actually make something new and innovative. We’re not going to miss these guys, not one bit, and while we do feel bad for the employees who have lost wages, it didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to know that Modu was a dodgy company.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.