14 DAY TRIAL // Wileyfox is one of the companies that invested in Windows phones at a time when nobody believed it was worth it, and by the looks of things, some of these rather controversial decisions have caused more harm than good.
According to a company employee, Wileyfox is now in administration due to financial trouble, and the future of the firm is uncertain, as not even the basic questions like long-term support for phones can be answered at this point.
“Wileyfox Europe Limited is in Administration. Andrew Andronikou and Andrew Hosking are appointed joint administrators and act jointly and severely without personal liability,” the employee said on reddit.
Long-term support
According to reports, the financial struggle started in December when Russian bank Promsvyazbank, which was the main backer of the phone maker, entered bankruptcy. Wileyfox says in a statement that it’s trying to ensure uninterrupted support and service for all mobile handsets and is hoping to restructure the entire group.
“The purpose of the administration is to restructure the Wileyfox Group, reduce its cost base in Europe and to ensure its long term future across all the markets it operates in. Regretfully, as a result of this, certain redundancies have been inevitable in WFE and the Wileyfox Group is working with those affected to ensure they have the support needed to find alternative employment,” the company said in a statement.
While Wileyfox was mostly focused on building affordable Android phones, the company also looked into Windows 10 Mobile devices, and it even launched a model called Wileyfox Pro last December.
The device was running Windows 10 Mobile and featured a 5.0-inch display, 2GB RAM, 16GB on-board storage and a removal battery. Wileyfox promised to support this device until mid-2020, though with this financial struggle, it remains to be seen how this is going to work in the long term.