Sendo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- for the Tibetan village see Sendo, Tibet
Sendo was a British Birmingham-based manufacturer and supplier of mobile phones founded in 1999. The company went into administration in June 2005 and its technology was bought by Motorola.
The company specialised in low-cost handsets aimed primarily at the pay-as-you-go markets and also high-end Symbian smartphones.
Sendo was created in 1999 by mobile phone experts from Philips and Motorola talent. In February 2001, Microsoft announced a partnership, in which Microsoft buys $12m of Sendo shares and a seat on the board. Sendo was to be Microsoft's "go to market partner" for the Stinger smartphone platform.
Microsoft were to deliver code the StingerOS by June. By December no code had been delivered and without any products to sell couldn't raise any money from sales or Venture Capitalists. Microsoft also declined a further cash injection. Sendo dropped Microsoft and opted to go with Symbian but eventually went bankrupt.
Under the deal with Microsoft, "Microsoft would obtain an irrevocable, royalty free license to use Sendo's Z100 intellectual property, including rights to make, use, or copy the Sendo Smartphone to create other to create other Smartphones and to, most importantly for Microsoft, sublicense those rights to third parties."
Sendo sued Microsoft in December 2002, alleging they stole proprietary technology and trade secrets and used those to launch itself into the mobile phone market.
Microsoft denied the allegations and in February 2003 last year filed a counter suit alleging breach of contract. A trial was scheduled for early 2005 but an out of court settlement was reached in September 2004, in which they was a "monetary component" and Microsoft giving up its stake of Sendo.
[edit] Models
- Sendo Z100
- Sendo P600
- Sendo S600
- Sendo K1
- Sendo M550
- Sendo M570
- Sendo S1
- Sendo S300
- Sendo S360
- Sendo S330
- Sendo S251
- Sendo SV663
- Sendo X
- Sendo X2
