We’ve heard weirder rumors about the future of Helio, our favorite MVNO, but this one’s got some interesting aspects to it. The buzz is that Virgin Mobile is looking to pick up Helio and merge the services, and in some ways the idea makes sense.
Virgin is the leading MVNO for low-end handsets. They sell utilitarian phones and services to people who just make calls. You can buy their gear at 7/11. What it doesn’t have is a high-end or smartphone product line for sophisticated users.
Helio is all high-end, with data-centric handsets and interactive features for power users. What it doesn’t have are low-end offerings or good distribution.
Thus, they would be a good match. But will it happen? SK Telecom still owns Helio and has the cash to keep it afloat as long as it wants, but it can’t buy Helio’s way into the stores. So will the merger happen? We’ll see, but don’t count it out, it’s an interesting idea from many angles.
Every Helio user I know swears that this is the best “Don’t Call it a Phone” they have ever used. Unfortunately, the company seems like it is very niche and that not enough people have one to take advantage of video messaging and chat functions. If this rumor is true, it may at least start to create worthy buzz for what I hear is a great product. Heck, I may even get one myself!
I am a very happy Helio Ocean owner, and I think this merger makes some real sense. Bringing together basic Virgin Mobile users who will at some point likely want to advance to the kinds of smartly priced data & messaging functionality available with Helio handsets is a great idea. I left Verizon for Helio because of Helio’s data features, specifically, its price-inclusive approach to messaging. The big guys want you to pay for both a voice and data plan to get the kind of functionality you get with Helio’s plans, or to pay outrageous per-message fees. That’s too much money for a personal-use phone plan! A Virgin-Helio enterprise would offer the best of both worlds and create some real competitive impetus for the big guys to start getting it right.