Virgin Mobile buys Helio

Helio, the mobile vir­tual net­work oper­a­tor (MVNO) that tried to sell MySpace-branded hand­sets and ser­vice, has been pur­chased by Vir­gin Mobile. 

After Earth­Link bailed out, SK Tele­com pumped an addi­tional US$270 mil­lion into Helio in a last-ditch effort to save the strug­gling business.

The Helio kiosks in Ala Moana Cen­ter never looked very busy. I’m not sure how many Helio sub­scribers signed up in Hawaii, but the nation­wide num­bers had gone down to 170,000, com­pared to Vir­gin Mobile’s 5 mil­lion. Young adults seem to carry T-Mobile’s Side­kick or a Ver­i­zon phone, although the iPhone may gain trac­tion in a few weeks with its new low price. 

See this TechCrunch arti­cle titled Helio Hangs It Up for more details. 

Related arti­cles and pages on billso.com

• iPhone
• 9 June 2008: iPhone 3G
• 13 April 2008: MySpace keeps try­ing to sell music downloads
• 29 Sep­tem­ber 2006: ESPN sacked, Helio scrambling

Tagged as: ala-moana, EarthLink, Hawaii, helio, Honolulu, mobile, music, mvno, myspace, network, Oahu, social, south-korea, video, virgin