INQ
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Communications |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Defunct | 31 January 2014 |
| Headquarters | Battersea, London, United Kingdom |
|
Key people
|
Ken Johnstone (CEO and Co-founder), Tom Mansbridge (Head of Marketing), Simon Davies (Head of Product Management) |
| Products | Social software, App |
|
Number of employees
|
N/A |
| Parent | Hutchison Whampoa |
| Website | inqmobile |
Inq was a social software and app manufacturer who launched two successful software products and a series of award-winning handsets. Material, Inq's personalised magazine, became the top free news app in the UK App Store and achieved a number 4 position in the US, shortly after launch. SO.HO, a social launcher developed by Inq, was also warmly received with press positioning it as an alternative to Facebook Home.
Prior to focusing on software, Inq released a series of "social mobiles" for which they were awarded "Best Newcomer" and "Best Handset" at the GSMA in 2009.
In January 2014 Inq announced that the business was to close down and that the apps they had in market would not be updated after this point.
Inq held offices in London and Rome and employed between 11 and 50 staff across the two offices.
The company was founded in 2007 by Ken Johnstone (Inq's current CEO), Frank Meehan and Jeff Taylor. It is a fully owned subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa and is backed by Li Ka-shing who is Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa and is also an investor in Facebook and Spotify.
Inq launched two software only products in 2013; Material a discovery app that delivered each of its users a personalised magazine based on their interests and SO.HO, a launcher and app that brought together Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in one place. Shortly after its release, the Material iOS app became a and achieved a number 4 rank in the Free News chart in the US app store. Inq describe their apps as social software and parts of the functionality are based on surfacing social networks or using elements from the social graph.
Inq describe Material as a "personalised magazine" that "hunts out content based on your interests". The app delivers a fresh update of content twice a day, grouping each delivery into a "morning/evening edition" The topics and stories in each edition are personalised to match the interests of each user and users can also add topics via a menu. The more a user uses Material, the more it learns about his or her interests. Users may also add additional topics of interest. In a press release regarding the product, CEO Ken Johnstone positioned Material as an anti-dote to content overload stating "With the avalanche of content out there, we're focused on finding new and exciting ways for people to get directly to the things they love. Material was the result of this thinking, an app that takes all the hard work out of finding great stuff.” and Inq state that the discovery app will help users "discover new content from new places". Material is available for iPhone and Android smartphones.
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Wikipedia