According to a report, venerable smartphone manufacturer and reseller i-mate has been suddenly shut down as of yesterday, with remaining employees told to take two months of unpaid leave beforehand before discovering that the main office located in Dubai’s Internet City business complex was locked.
i-mate was at one point a major player in the smartphone ODM market in 2005, rebranding HTC devices for the Middle Eastern, US and Asian markets before branching out recently into manufacturing its own devices and designs in China after HTC shifted from an OEM device manufacturer to a brand in its own right last year.
In recent years, the company dealt with stock price and supplier issues according to its founder, which lead to its lineup being sourced from many Chinese OEMs at once while the company shifted to a new direct retail delivery model instead of the common manufacturer/distributor model.
The last major device released by the company was the i-mate 810F mil-spec rugged Windows Mobile smartphone released in February, with its flagship Ultimate lineup plagued by Qualcomm/Broadcom patent issues preventing most of the devices from being sold directly in the US since last year.
