You may not have heard of Gioneea Chinese mobile manufacturer founded in 2002 that managed to become one of the leading manufacturers in the country: Gionee mobile phones were not as popular as those of other Chinese manufacturers, but they managed to spread to different countries around the world and achieve some popularity. In fact, the company was present at MWC on several occasions.
Although the company has achieved a global market share of 4.7%, this has not prevented Gionee from facing a serious economic situation, accumulating large debts and losing a lot of money. The company’s financial situation was so bad that Gionee filed for bankruptcy a few weeks after its CEO lost tens of millions of dollars gambling at a casino.
The company had been facing a very complicated economic situation for months.
Images | Ivan Linares (Xataka Android)
At the end of 2016, the company continued to launch new mobile phones on the market. One of these mobile phones was the Gionee M2017, a high-end terminal that attracted attention at the time for its particular design and its extremely high price. A few months later, the Chinese manufacturer announced the opening of a factory in India, so everything indicated that things were going well.
In 2018, the company was facing serious financial problems that prevented it from even paying its suppliers and at the end of the year, it was learned that the CEO of the company had lost $144 million betting at a casino, although Liu Lirong later claimed he did not use company funds.
Initially, the amount lost was said to be close to 10 billion yuan (about $1.4 billion at the exchange rate at the time), but the company’s CEO denied that the figure was that high and said it was closer to 1 billion yuan (about $144 million at the time).
Of course, The company’s financial problems began long before: Gionee had been losing money for many months, a situation that prevented it from paying its suppliers and which led to the bankruptcy of the company when in the middle a Shenzhen court accepted the liquidation request of Huaxing Bank against Gionee.
From that moment barely heard of the companyalthough everything seems to indicate that it is still operational in one way or another. In fact, in early 2022 we were talking about the Gionee G13 Pro, a new mobile phone from the company. At the time, it was indicated that the situation could lead to a reorganization of the company, so it seems that Gionee has managed to stay afloat to some extent.
Not much is known about how Gionee has managed to keep releasing phones, but the question of betting This is not the only controversy Company-related: In late 2020, the company was found guilty of infecting millions of devices with a Trojan.
Apparently the company has started installing malware on their mobile phones in December 2018 and continued to do so until October 2019, almost a year later. Gionee collaborated with a company known as Baice on the infection of user devices and the two companies are said to have earned an economic profit of about 27.85 million yuan (about four million dollars) from this activity.
Via | Economic Times, The Indian Express, Telecom, Jiemian, South China Morning Post, Ifeng, India Today and GSMArena
Cover image | Ivan Linares
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