Inq Mobile Friday announced it will shutter its business permanantly on January 31, 2014, according to a post on the company’s website.
Credited with making the affordable feature phone cool again, INQ came to market with the Inq1 in 2008, which featured deep integration of Facebook. Founded by Frank Meehan and owned by Hutchison Whampoa, Inq made its phones initially available on carrier 3 in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Italy.
Meehan has since went on to found Kuato Studios, which focuses on creative content development for educational purposes.
In recent years, Inq had switched to developing mobile applications, releasing the Material app, a predictive content aggregation app, as well as SO.HO, an Android launcher. The company said Material will serve its final editions on January 28 and SO.HO will continue to function after closure. However, the apps will not be updated after this point.
In a statement on its website, the company said that neither Material nor SO.HO retained any personal data about users.
Filed Under: Devices
