It seems that i-mate didn't manage to conquer the Paradise, or at least the massive lay-offs from on Friday suggest this. According to Engadget i-mate's US division in Redmond, Washington has all but disintegrated after a Friday bloodbath that saw the entire engineering, QA, and tech writing departments laid off, among others. Several honchos who weren't cut left anyway, perhaps unwilling to work in a ghost town or as a show of solidarity to their fallen brethren; notably, the Chief Software Officer and VP of Sales and Marketing are both gone, leaving a sales director to be promoted to the lofty title of GM of what seems to be all US operations. Apparently, the Dubai-based firm is in the hurt locker after its inability to get the Ultimate line (also known as "the basket with all of i-mate's eggs in it") fully deployed to retail channels in the time frame it had hoped, and meeting massive resistance from US carriers to carry the devices, it's been left with no option but to leave behind just enough employees to set up and maintain a web-based portal for purchasing unlocked devices in the States. i-mate was previously forced to cancel some other devices - hopefully this doesn't mean the beginning of a sad ending.
Translated by Szaszati
