When Wileyfox was launched back in 2015, it positioned itself an Android smartphone maker aimed at meeting the needs of the enthusiasts in the society. The company was brave enough to launch a phone that runs on CynaogenOS, which was well received by the target market.
At launch, Wileyfox released two smartphones, Storm and Swift, that were seen as proper mid-rangers but the company sought to meet the needs of the price conscious by releasing a low-end smartphone, Spark.
Wileyfox even launched their Swift and Storm smartphones in the country, which didn’t do so well but the company’s woes really started when Cyanogen Inc shut down in 2016, leaving the company with no software provider thus resulting in the company making its own software that probably strained the company thin.
Things seem to have hit rock bottom, as a former Wileyfox employee took it to Reddit to announce that the company was under administration. “Wileyfox Europe Limited is in Administration. Andrew Andronikou and Andrew Hosking are appointed joint administrators and act jointly and severely without personal liability… Today is a sad day not just because I lost my job but because I believed in the Wileyfox brand,” he writes.
This is to say, Wileyfox has been unable to pay its debts and thus an external person or persons have been brought in to manage the company with the hopes of pushing the company to pay its debts. If this fails, then the company will undergo liquidation.
This is not the first time we have seen a smartphone manufacturer hit by financial woes. LeECo, which you probably haven’t heard of, had to scale down its rapid growth as its finances were stretched thin. A few years ago, Xiaomi was in a similar position. We have also seen a big company like Sony try to scale down operations in an effort to stay within budgets and profitability lines.
