With acquisitions frequently come layoffs, and Virgin Mobile's submitting to that ages-old tradition today by announcing a workforce reduction of 45 folks in its New Jersey and California offices -- a total of about 10 percent of its 400-strong team. With the closure of the company's Helio buy, it makes sense that there'd be some redundancy, and indeed, the company cites Helio along with its transition to an IBM-contracted IT infrastructure as the justification for the layoffs. The move comes despite Virgin Mobile USA having post a strong quarter, so while Virgin appears to be in solid shape, they're making like most of corporate America and battening the hatches for a presumably brutal '09.

As 3G sliders go, the Shuttle won't rank terribly high on anyone's hot list, but as Virgin Mobile handsets go, specifically -- well, the Shuttle is pure gold. We toyed with it a bit at CTIA, and yeah, okay, it's not going to blow any minds. But if we put on our prepaid hats for just a moment, we can see how this is exactly what the doctor ordered: it's definitely the best-looking and feeling handset in Virgin's lineup, and at the same time, it doesn't come close to encroaching on Helio's higher-end territory. Granted, the 3G support doesn't mean terribly much considering the small screen (and we dare not mention "Virgin" and "tether" in the same sentence), so the Shuttle's gonna have to push units on the strength of its strapping good looks and support for Buddy Beacon. We think it'll manage.

This is one of those classic tales of joy and sorrow -- a tale of a phone that could've been Helio's undisputed flagship model of the year, a phone that could've saved the scrappy little MVNO from Virgin Mobile's gaping maw (alright, it couldn't have even come close to doing that, but we're running with it for the drama factor). On the high side, we've now heard confirmation straight from the source that the Ocean 2 is, in fact, a real device, but the problem is that it won't be coming out until next year because they "want to put it out when it's the best it can be." It's sure looking just about the "best it can be" from the videos we've seen recently -- and frankly, we think they should just throw this out there while kicking off development on an Ocean 3 ASAP -- but it looks like the decision's already been made, and we all know there's no such thing as moving a release date forward.

[Thanks, Blade G]

We don't like the obvious pun any more than the next guy, but in the case of Virgin Mobile USA's Shuttle, we've got to admit: the spacecraft analogies are totally appropriate. First off, it's unusually sleek (dare we say attractive?) for a Virgin set -- but far more importantly, it marks the MVNO's very first foray into the crazy, fast-paced world of EV-DO-based 3G, a nod to the fact that it'd probably like to close the gap a bit with its Helio division. Speaking of Helio, the PCD-sourced offers Helio's Buddy Beacon service and also serves up a 1.3-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, expandable memory, and a 2-inch screen for watching girls with blonde hair blowing in the breeze. It'll be available exclusively through Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile starting September 28.

The deed is done, and Virgin Mobile is wasting no time giving its fresh acquisition a giant bear-hug to welcome it to the family. Helio is now "Helio by Virgin Mobile," tagged with the line "Plan To Have It All" -- hopefully a nod to the fact that Virgin plans to keep Helio's offerings distanced from Virgin as a higher-end, feature-rich carrier that can compliment Virgin's typical lineup of ultra-cheap prepaid goods. To kick things off, Helio is now offering an upgrade to its $80 A La Carte plan, boosting the 1,500 included minutes to a limitless bucket -- nice, we'll take it -- and Virgin is stealing some of Helio's mojo to offer the Shuttle, a new handset marketed under the Virgin name that'll integrate Helio's Buddy Beacon service. Just stay on track with the Ocean 2, fellas, and everything's cool by us.

When we think about high-tech, newfangled location-based services on a carrier, Virgin Mobile USA typically isn't that carrier -- but hey, Virgin and its basic handsets can't stay stuck in the stone age forever, especially now that even the most basic, ultra-cheap prepaid phones being offered stateside commonly do Bluetooth, GPS, and everything in between. Enter Buzzd, which is dropping on Virgin's content deck to give users quick and easy access to entertainment around their current location. Now, true to Virgin's simple roots, users are still going to have to enter a location to get started, but let's be honest: these guys can't ignore the GPS trend forever. Let us know when you're ready for 2008, guys!

[Via Phone Scoop]

The sad part of Virgin Mobile's Q2 earnings story is that it lost customers (to the tune of some 111,000), saw ARPU slide from $20.97 to $19.32 year over year, and watched its profits get halved over the same period to a slim $3.5 million. The happy part? Hey, at least they're in the black, and we're sure they'd rather break even than hemorrhage cash the way virtually all of their MVNO brethren have. At any rate, the company thinks that it'll turn things around heading into '09 with the addition of Helio to its portfolio, which it confirms will be leveraged to offer "new data services and feature-rich handsets" -- both concepts that bare-bones Virgin isn't accustomed to offering in the States. The Ocean 2 would be a nice way to kick off that plan, would it not?

Apparently feeling a little celebratory after negotiating lower wholesale rates for voice and data, British MVNO Virgin Mobile has said that it intends to start offering broadband data cards some time in the fourth quarter of the year. In the UK, Virgin operates on top of T-Mobile's wireless backbone, so customers of the new data service should have a pretty nice HSDPA footprint with which to work -- a totally upside-down version of the US picture, where Virgin uses Sprint, offers no data cards (hell, they barely admit the existence of data on their handsets), and rocks CDMA to the core. Weird how the world works sometimes.

So all of Virgin's many, many brands tend to have a somewhat quirky sense of humor, and typically, that seems to sit just fine with the company's young (and youthful) target demo. It's par for the course then with Strip2Clothe, a campaign it recently launched to get folks to do their best Elizabeth-Berkley-in-Showgirls impression on camera. The idea was simple, if not a little bizarre: post up your best striptease, and for every five views, Virgin would donate one article of clothing to a network of organizations dedicated to helping homeless youth around the country. Problem is, those organizations were never consulted before Virgin launched the campaign, and some of them weren't terribly pleased with the concept, calling it "exploitative" and "distasteful" among other things. Despite the outcry, Strip2Clothe is still online, with a Virgin rep saying "this issue is really important to us, we've had over 12,000 hits for the site so far, and we want to continue to raise awareness for this important issue." And yes, we know you're going to Google it the second you're done reading this, so don't even try to hide it.

[Via mocoNews]

Virgin Mobile has released the Arc, another in a long, long line of prepaid models designed to keep the upfront payment to a minimum at the cost of a killer feature list. Still, though, the UTStarcom-sourced flip makes out with Bluetooth, dual color displays, and a VGA camera for its $49.99 asking price, and the red / black color combo doesn't look half bad. We'll have a closer look at the Arc in the next few days, but if you simply must have one now, they're on sale immediately.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Money-losing companies with interesting technology and a small, if rabid, customer base still frequently tend to sell for healthy chunks of change -- especially in the wireless space. Look at Trolltech, for example, the mobile Linux company that never really made any money, yet somehow managed to be acquired by Nokia for its talent and IP, which apparently carried a value of over $150m. We know Helio was burning cash on a whole 'nother level, but that doesn't entirely explain why SK Telecom was so absurdly desperate to dump their $500m investment. At a $39m acquisition price, SK didn't just lose its shirt -- it lost that, the shoes, and then the pants. You know, the pants with a half-billion dollars in them.

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Do you hear that, Helio? That [cue Sir Richard Branson's soothing voice] is the sound of inevitability. Rumors have been swirling for a few weeks now that SK Telecom -- Helio's majority owner -- is getting ready to cut, run, and offload its share to Virgin Mobile, rolling the scrappy MVNO into the one and only virtual network in the US that's been met with substantial, quantifiable success (more recent stock woes notwithstanding). Now, the Financial Times is reporting that a deal is cued up and ready for a public introduction as early as this week. The sooner, the better, because tons of questions remain about the fate of subscribers and the introduction of the pretty hotly anticipated Ocean 2, a device that at one time could've been Helio's savior; too late for that now, we guess.

Virgin Mobile has always positioned itself as a super-crazy-value carrier in the US, and that trend certainly continues with its latest plan option, "Totally Unlimited". The idea's about as simple as the name implies -- the MVNO hooks you up with unlimited calling at any time of day or night for a shade under $80 a month, which already positions it favorably against all the nationals and major regionals -- but the coup de grace has to be the contract-free nature of the whole thing. When you sign up, Virgin doesn't want your soul for two years, and it doesn't even want your credit card if you'd prefer to pay your dues with a crumpled-up wad of cash every month (where you got that money is none of our business, after all). Unlimited text and pixture messaging can be added for another $10 monthly, which ends up pitting Virgin squarely against the $89.99 plan offered by one of its corporate parents, Sprint (which doesn't actually own much of Virgin Mobile anymore, so we guess there's probably not too much love lost there). Look for Totally Unlimited to hit the streets on July 1.

Virgin Mobile's warnings of a bleak quarter were pretty dead-on, with a mere 17,772 net adds coming on board during the three-month time frame ending March 31 -- not quite the blockbuster 309,721 reported in the same period a year ago. Similarly, revenue and income both took a dive, supposedly in part due to a big marketing push focused on the MVNO's new pricing plans. If there's a silver lining on the dark, rumbling cloud, though, it's that the CEO believes they'll start to see some positive growth again in the third quarter after a weak second (for his sake, we hope he's right). Also notable was a mention that although the company had no strategic partnerships, alliances, or investments to announce, it was definitely open to "non-organic growth" in the form of another MVNO or "capability." Wonder what he may have been talking about there?

[Via mocoNews]