InPhonic
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|
| Industry | Wireless |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| Founder | David A. Steinberg |
| Headquarters | Washington, DC, USA |
|
Area served
|
USA |
|
Key people
|
David A. Steinberg, John Sculley, Jack Kemp, Ira Brind, Lawrence E. Harris, Blake Bath |
| Products | Cell phones and wireless plans |
| Revenue |
 $320.5 million USD (2006) |
 $38.2 million USD (2006) |
|
|
Number of employees
|
< 1,000 |
InPhonic Inc was an American company which sold wireless services and devices online, both through its own electronic commerce sites and through private labeled websites it created and managed for online retailers. The company was headquartered in Washington, DC and maintained technology and operations centers in Largo, Maryland.
InPhonic was founded by David A. Steinberg who resigned in 2007 due to poor debt management and decreasing revenues. Its board of directors included former Vice-Presidential candidate Jack Kemp and technology/marketing guru John Sculley (of PepsiCo and Apple Computer fame).
On November 8, 2007, InPhonic filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The filings were made in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The company's stock was later delisted by NASDAQ. Many of the assets of Inphonic, including its electronic commerce operations and its Wirefly.com web site, were subsequently sold to private investors who used those assets to launch the company Simplexity in January 2008.
The company was modeled after sites like Expedia, gathering information from companies into a single site to help customers find deals by comparing services and prices. Wireless carriers did business with InPhonic because acquiring a customer through the company can be less expensive than traditional marketing approaches designed to generate sales at a brick-and-mortar store. InPhonic, in turn, received a commission from carriers for each new account generated, once the customer met a number of criteria. InPhonic helped grow this market for third-party activations to nearly 50% of all newly acquired cell phone subscribers in the U.S.
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