HELIO
Based: Westwood, CA
Founded: 2005
www.helio.com
Why It's Fierce: HELIO, backed by partners SK Telecom, Korea’s leading mobile operator, and EarthLink, is probably the best leveraged MVNO worldwide. The company, which launched just last week in the U.S. using the EV-DO network from Sprint Nextel and later Verizon Wireless, has received some $440 million in initial funding from its partners. That kind of money combined with SK Telecom's buying power and dedicated R&D gets you big deals with the likes of MySpace.com--the most popular social networking Web site in the U.S.--and a choice of exclusive handsets from Korean manufacturers like Pantech and VK Mobile. The breadth of technology HELIO gets from SK Telecom, one of the world's most successful players in mobile data services, is the envy of any MVNO, or mobile operator for that matter. While other MVNOs are focusing on one segment of the market, HELIO's funding allows it to target more than one demographic: the savvy, young power user; Korean-American users under the "HELIO powered by SK Telecom" brand; and existing EarthLink customers, which number about 5 million.
What to look for: Look for HELIO to gain early traction in the significantly under penetrated Korean-American market segment. With CEO Sky Dayton's extensive relationship with Boingo, the WiFi hotspot aggregator that Dayton used to run, look for HELIO to make some aggressive moves in the fixed-mobile convergence market.
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