The filing is significant to the adult industry because Amp’d Mobile Inc. also is one of the largest distributors of wireless softcore porn downloads.
Amp’d Mobile Inc. has close to 200,000 subscribers and offers original mainstream video content and games, as well as content from Club Jenna, Playboy Mobile, Show Girlz, Asian Divas, DreamGirls, Suze Randall, Benchwarmer Babes and Motek Import Models.
The company, which launched in December 2005, leases access to networks of Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC of the U.K., and markets voice and other services under its own brand.
With the latest news, Amp’d Mobile now becomes the latest of several mobile ventures to stumble in the effort to bring video, music and other content to cellphones.
The Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based company is battling over a small slice of the wireless market because while the number of U.S. cellphone users has been steadily growing, few of them use cellphones to watch video and music.
Mobile ESPN, a venture backed by Walt Disney Co.’s sports cable channel ESPN, closed doors a few months after it launched a wireless service targeted at sports fans.
In its Friday filing, Amp’d Mobile had total assets of less than $100 million but was more than $100 million in debt. It originally attracted $360 million in funding from some of the largest media and technology companies and well-known venture capital firms, as well as hedge funds and private equity firms.
The company now plans to reorganize. “We are pretty confident we’ll come out stronger,” Amp’d Mobile President Bill Stone said in a statement.