Gionee, smartphone manufacturer for QMobile, declares bankruptcy

Gionee, one of the largest smartphone supplier for QMobile, has declared bankruptcy and might go out of business completely.

Gionee is a Chinese smartphone manufacturer which sells phones under its brand in China and also supplies its devices for rebranding to other companies like QMobile.

Gionee has been facing a lot of troubles over the past few years. It owns a total of CNY 20.2 billion (around $3 billion) to different creditors in China. It has failed to meet its payment deadlines for the past year. It recently applied for liquidation bankruptcy by Huaxang Bank. A court has now accepted this application and as a result, Gionee has now officially entered bankruptcy.

There is a strong possibility that the company will go under as for the past few months, its reported losses per month have exceeded 14 million dollars. However, its founder Liu Lirong believes that the company can turn around its fortunes within the next 3 to 5 years.

So what does it mean for QMobile?

QMobile does not manufacture any of its own phones and a large number of its devices were supplied by Gionee. So if Gionee goes under, it might mean the end of QMobile too. QMobile itself hasn’t been faring too well in Pakistan since the past couple of years, making any comeback by the company without the support of Gionee very difficult. If Gionee doesn’t recover from these tough times or if QMobile fails to find any other supplier then we might not get to see another phone with the QMobile branding in the near future.

Update: According to sources familiar with QMobile, it currently has working relationships with more than 20 other manufacturers. QMobile ceased all its projects with Gionee three years ago and thus will remain functionally unaffected by financial turmoils of Gionee. QMobile has the capacity and also plans to continue its operations as normal in Pakistan.