Over €1m will be invested in a new mobile phone marketplace portal over the next three years. Sandyford-based fish4fones.ie will offer consumers and businesspeople “same day” delivery on SIM-free mobile phones ordered online, over the phone, by email or by fax.
The fish4fones.ie marketplace will offer network-free phones from major manufacturers like Nokia, Siemens and Sony Ericsson online. It will also offer pre-pay and contract phones as well as mobile accessories and ringtones on its website, which was designed using Parallel Internet’s pTools content management technology.
A “same day” delivery service will be offered in Dublin and “next day” throughout the country. Customers can also send a phone as a gift, regardless of the recipient’s network.
The company has been founded by brothers Conor and John English who already run an established mobile phone insurance firm called FoneCover, which provides mobile phone insurance to more than 170,000 O2 customers. The company employs around 45 people.
“We have committed to investing €300,000 per annum in this venture,” explains Conor English, managing director of fish4fones.ie. “Because the phones are not linked to any particular network the cost of the phones is very low and we can undercut most retail prices for mobile phones and devices by 20pc.
“We’ve made the site very easy to navigate and the purchasing process as simple as possible. We believe that the marketplace will appeal to people who want to get better phones but may not be due an upgrade from their providers.
“The site is already taking in revenues as we had it available on Google for the past week. The plan is to break even very quickly within the next six months,” English told siliconrepublic.com.
By John Kennedy
