Sierra Wireless Kills The Troubled Voq

It was less than two years ago that Sierra Wireless, mostly known for its datacard solutions, jumped into the handset business with its Voq smartphone. At the time, we actually thought the design, with a flip out keyboard, seemed innovative. That was before we ever had a chance to handle it -- and realized the design was ridiculously cumbersome and poorly thought out. It was so poorly thought out, in fact, that earlier this year the company's shareholders started a class action suit against the company for making such a bad phone. As we noted at the time, that sounds like a case without any merit whatsoever (imagine shareholders suing every time a company had a dud product -- no companies would ever be able to afford the liability risk of innovating). However, it appears that Sierra Wireless has finally had enough of the Voq and its quirky keyboard -- and are killing the whole project.