Sierra Wireless Ends Voq Professional and Smartphone Efforts

[Mike Temporale]

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=4628

"Sierra Wireless, Inc. has announced plans to exit its Voq Professional Phone initiative and that it is shifting some Voq resources to its core PC Card and Embedded Modules business. "These actions are designed to focus the company on the core areas of our business where we have extensive experience and a well established market position. We believe that both the PC Card and Embedded Module markets represent significant growth opportunities with the highest potential returns in our portfolio. Our goal is to ensure that we have a strong, sustainable leadership position in these areas," said David Sutcliffe, President and CEO of Sierra Wireless. "We have enjoyed limited success to date on the Voq Professional Phone and have concluded that continuing to proceed with Voq is no longer the best use of our resources, given our other opportunities. We will now seek the most effective exit, whether by divestiture or by termination of the initiative."



This is too bad. Sierra had a really good product, as anyone that has used the Voq will tell you. Overall it was a great phone with a solid feel to it. All they really needed to do was add support for Bluetooth, and drop the size a little, which could easily be added in version 2. I, for one, am sorry to see them go, there was so much potential in that phone.

You can read more of the press release on Sierra's website.

[Mike Temporale]

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=4628

"Sierra Wireless, Inc. has announced plans to exit its Voq Professional Phone initiative and that it is shifting some Voq resources to its core PC Card and Embedded Modules business. "These actions are designed to focus the company on the core areas of our business where we have extensive experience and a well established market position. We believe that both the PC Card and Embedded Module markets represent significant growth opportunities with the highest potential returns in our portfolio. Our goal is to ensure that we have a strong, sustainable leadership position in these areas," said David Sutcliffe, President and CEO of Sierra Wireless. "We have enjoyed limited success to date on the Voq Professional Phone and have concluded that continuing to proceed with Voq is no longer the best use of our resources, given our other opportunities. We will now seek the most effective exit, whether by divestiture or by termination of the initiative."



This is too bad. Sierra had a really good product, as anyone that has used the Voq will tell you. Overall it was a great phone with a solid feel to it. All they really needed to do was add support for Bluetooth, and drop the size a little, which could easily be added in version 2. I, for one, am sorry to see them go, there was so much potential in that phone.

You can read more of the press release on Sierra's website.

[Jason Dunn]

What a freaking joke. Our Canadian government gives them a GRANT, they build a phone that is a complete market failure (sorry Mike, I think it was a brick and horribly designed), they ignore all the feedback from the enthusiast phone market, and they wonder why the failed. I have zero sympathy for them - they went about the process all wrong. :?

[aussie]

I agree with you Jason, I had a couple of these phones and while they "had potential" two years ago they in no way could compete with the much smaller and more nimble smartphones that were out at the time of their release. They also could not compete with the fantastic new PPC phones or the various shades of a BlackBerry.

Most of us Bay Street / Wall Street types are carrying RIM's and until Windows Mobile 5 and the new exchange server extensions are accepted by our organizations I doubt that RIM's dominance of the mobile corporate email market will change.

My two cents.

[Mike Temporale]

I'm not saying that the Voq didn't have any problems. We all know that isn't true. You guys are both right, the features just didn't line up with what was on currently on the market. However, it was still a good phone, and it was my understanding that Sierra was working on version 2 - due around the middle of next year. All of it's short comings should have / could have been fixed in this next release. Of course, if the people at Sierra still had their fingers in their ears and were not listening to the feedback, then maybe this was for the best. :wink: