Smartphone maker Gionee is bankrupt

Smartphone maker Gionee has been declared bankrupt. The Chinese manufacturer was in financial trouble and had laid off employees and failed to pay suppliers. There is a chance of a restart of the company.

Huaxing Bank has filed for bankruptcy and a Chinese court has declared bankruptcy, Ifeng reports. The Chinese site reports that the founder of Gionee has hired consultants to help restart the company.

The financial problems were caused by disappointing results, but were made worse by the founder’s gambling debts. He is said to have lost more than a billion Chinese yuan of his company’s capital in a casino. Gionee was a big name in the Chinese smartphone market for several years, but its market share has slumped in recent years. It tried to distinguish itself with, among other things, devices with large batteries.

Bigger brands such as Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi have taken over the market and have a combined market share of almost eighty percent. Gionee had stopped paying suppliers for some time, as a result of which they stopped supplying components.