Inq was a social software and app manufacturer who launched two successful software products and a series of award-winning handsets. Material, Inq's personalised magazine, became the top free news app in the UK App Store and achieved a number 4 position in the US, shortly after launch.Material: Tailored magazine featuring news, blogs & RSS - Daily Ranks , App Annie
/ref> SO.HO, a social launcher developed by Inq, was also warmly received with press positioning it as an alternative to

Facebook Home Facebook Home was a user interface layer for Android smartphones. Developed by the company then known as Facebook (now Meta Platforms), the software was designed to be a drop-in replacement for the device's existing home screen ("launcher"). I ...

. Prior to focusing on software, Inq released a series of "social mobiles" for which they were awarded "Best Newcomer" and "Best Handset" at the GSMA in 2009. In January 2014 Inq announced that the business was to close down and that the apps they had in market would not be updated after this point.

Company Overview

Inq held offices in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

and employed between 11 and 50 staff across the two offices. The company was founded in 2007 by Ken Johnstone (Inq's current CEO), Frank Meehan and Jeff Taylor. It is a fully owned subsidiary of

Hutchison Whampoa Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) was an investment holding company based in Hong Kong. It was a Fortune Global 500 company and one of the largest companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. HWL was an international corporation with a dive ...

and is backed by

Li Ka-shing Sir Ka-shing Li (; born 13 June 1928) is a Hong Kong billionaire business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. As of June 2019, Li is the 31st richest person in the world, with an estimated net wealth of US$33.4 billion. He is the senior ad ...

who is Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa and is also an investor in Facebook and Spotify.

Inq Software and Apps

Inq launched two software only products in 2013; Material a discovery app that delivered each of its users a personalised magazine based on their interests and SO.HO, a launcher and app that brought together

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

in one place. Shortly after its release, the Material iOS app became a App Annie Ranking
(Subscription Required) and achieved a number 4 rank in the Free News chart in the US app store. Inq describe their apps as social software and parts of the functionality are based on surfacing social networks or using elements from the social graph.

Material

Inq describe Material as a "personalised magazine" that "hunts out content based on your interests". The app delivers a fresh update of content twice a day, grouping each delivery into a "morning/evening edition" The topics and stories in each edition are personalised to match the interests of each user and users can also add topics via a menu. The more a user uses Material, the more it learns about his or her interests. Users may also add additional topics of interest. In a press release regarding the product, CEO Ken Johnstone positioned Material as an anti-dote to content overload stating "With the avalanche of content out there, we're focused on finding new and exciting ways for people to get directly to the things they love. Material was the result of this thinking, an app that takes all the hard work out of finding great stuff.” and Inq state that the discovery app will help users "discover new content from new places". Material is available for iPhone and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

. Inq released Material in BETA as an Android only product. The BETA app was praised by press for "its colorful and intelligent design" and UI. Similarly the Android public showed an interest in the app with the BETA achieving over 50,000 installs. In August 2014 Inq launched an iOS version of Material which had a redesigned UI and improvements to Inq's “interest extraction engine,” which forms the intelligence behind the app. Shortly after its release, the Material iOS app became a number 1 app in the Free News category and achieved a rank of number 4 rank in the Free News chart in the US app store. The app has been compared by press to other personalised news services such as Flipboard and

Zite Flipboard is a news aggregator and social network aggregation company based in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York, Vancouver, and Bejiing. Its software, also known as Flipboard, was first released in July 2010. It aggregates conten ...

. In a review of the Material app,

VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. History The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, a ...

commented "While there are quite a few news-reading apps out there and Flipboard holds the dominant position, Material sets itself apart with design and intelligent curation." Unlike Flipboard, the makers of MATERIAL claim it will "evolve with you", learning what you like and recognising when your interests change

SO.HO

The mobile launcher, SO.HO was launched by Inq for

devices in 2013 The interface was designed by Chris Kelly. SO.HO allows the user to have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds on their homescreen, additionally the homescreen app allows for tweets, status updates, likes and comments to be made through the launcher. The launcher provides the user a full screen version of their respective Twitter, Instagram and Facebook networks after they unlock their phone, in a similar manner to

or HTC Blinkfeed. SO.HO is available in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, Spanish (Europe/US) Portuguese, Korean,

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

, Italian,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

and

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

. In press commentary about the launcher, Inq initially stated that they intend to add more social networks to the launcher. However more recent updates to the app have added in bespoke social media feeds that mix content from multiple networks in one view. The SO.HO feed is described by Ina as "a place where you can see the latest videos, pictures and links shared from all your friends across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram." whilst the "Hashtag feed" shows users "the conversations happening right now across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about that subject".

Inq Phones

When it was founded in 2007, Inq's business model focused on creating affordable, mid-range

which deeply integrated

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

and a range of usability features. Inq phones were sold in Canada, India, Singapore, UK, Austria, Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy and Sweden. As per news reports, Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel), on 14 September 2009 announced that it would be start selling the social networking phone INQ Mini 3G, developed by INQ mobile. This phone launched on 19 September 2009 in Singapore. On 18 March 2010 Aircel in India started selling the INQ Mini and INQ Chat, and on 28 July 2010 the INQ Chat went on sale in Canada from Telus and Koodo. In January 2013 Inq announced that they would no longer manufacture handsets but would focus exclusively on producing social software. A Venturebeat article at CES quoted Ken Johnston as saying that “We’ve finished up with hardware a year ago, and we’ve been working our app engine since then,” Inq CEO and cofounder Ken Johnstone said last night at a CES 2013 event.Former 'Facebook phone' maker Inq pivots to apps with beautiful Flipboard killer Material , VentureBeat , Mobile , by Sean Ludwig
/ref> Inq stated on their Facebook page that they will not be making further handsets but that they will continue to support those who own an Inq handset.

INQ1

The INQ1 was INQ's first mobile phone. It was released in December 2008, featuring a 2.2" QVGA screen, and a 3.2megapixel camera. Applications on the phone include:

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

, Last.fm,

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

, Myspace and

Windows Live Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger ser ...

INQ Mini 3G

The follow on from the INQ1, this time with added Twitter functionality. Sharing a similar design to its 'sister' phone the Chat 3G, interchangeable back covers are available to purchase. The phone has a 2.0megapixel camera and was launched at £39.99 in the UK. The INQ1 is notable for its very tight integration with

and

. It was endorsed at launch by

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...

and other industry identities. A high level of firmware branding is present in the phone's operating system, this signifies a push for highly proprietary "for the network, by the network" mobile telephones which are extremely hard to unlock or debrand. In September 2009 Inq publicly stated that the company would build phones based on the Android mobile operating system, and claims they will be ready in early 2011.

INQ Chat 3G

The 'big sister' to the Mini 3G, featuring similar functionality. However, the phone has an additional

QWERTY keyboard QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typ ...

, a 3.2megapixel camera and a

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

device.

Inq Cloud Touch

The first of INQ's new Android-powered phones, moving away from BREW used in their previous phones. The mobile has more integration to

than the previous phones, with direct access from the homescreen to popular aspects like Chat and Places. This is also the first INQ phone to feature

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...

, which replaces a proprietary music player altogether. The Cloud Touch has a button dedicated to Spotify so you can access immediately, in addition to an 'Info' button for quick access to settings and information. The phone has a 3.5"

HVGA The graphics display resolution is the width and height dimension of an electronic visual display device, measured in pixels. This information is used for electronic devices such as a computer monitor. Certain combinations of width and height ar ...

touchscreen, and will be available in three different colours from April in the UK. Social networks and related services embedded into Inq phones *

* Last.fm *

* doubleTwist * Orkut (India)

History

Inq was founded in 2008 by Ken Johnstone, Frank Meehan and Jeff Taylor. In August 2009, the company launched two phones-the INQ Mini 3G (a candy-bar type form factor with

and

) and the INQ Chat 3G (a

QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...

device with Twitter, Facebook and GMail integration). Both models went on sale in Q4 2009 and feature removable coloured back panels. The INQ1 won Phone of the Year at the 2009 GSMA Awards in Barcelona which are known informally as the industry Oscars. The judges highlighted the handset's affordability, deep integration of social networks and ease of use in their winner's announcement. In September 2010 news reports speculated about rumors that Facebook and Inq were working together on a “Facebook Phone”. To date no Facebook phone has emerged from either Inq or

themselves. In June 2011 it was reported that Jeff Taylor had left the company to start his own venture with Inq PR Head Soheb Panja This was followed by an announcement in September 2011 that Frank Meehan had been replaced as CEO by Ken Johnstone, co-founder and formerly Director of Products for Inq. In January 2013 Inq announced that they would be focusing exclusively on producing social software moving forward and would no longer be involved in the manufacture or distribution of handsets. A Venturebeat article at CES quoted Ken Johnston as saying that “We’ve finished up with hardware a year ago, and we’ve been working our app engine since then,” Inq CEO and cofounder Ken Johnstone said last night at a CES 2013 event. This announcement was followed by a company rebrand, at which the company redesigned its logo and began to write the company name as Inq Mobile rather than the original INQ. Inq launched a beta version of MATERIAL, a content discovery engine in February 2013. In an interview with Pocket-lint MATERIAL was positioned as a continuation of the Inq business, rather than a pivot from phones, with Pocket-Lint writing that "Inq is no stranger to "social DNA". The brief foray into devices with the INQ Cloud Touch back in 2011 very much centred on a granular integration of services like Facebook, helping important content rise to the surface. That ethos still sits at the core of what Inq is working on.". Other titles presented MATERIAL as a "pivot" for Inq, suggesting a change in business strategy. Inq followed this with the launch a second beta app, SO.HO in May 2013. SO.HO (short for Social Homescreen) is an Android launcher. On the Inq Mobile blog, Inq say that SO.HO "allows you to put your favourite social networks on the homescreen of your Android mobile so that you can check what’s happening on multiple social networks without diving in and out of apps." In August 2013 Inq launched the iOS version of Material and brought the Android version of Material out of beta. The launch of Material for iPhone was covered by many key press titles including Engagdet,

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

and Venturebeat. As of 31 January 2014 they have ceased operations, the last issue of Material was on the 28th. SO.HO will continue to work but will no longer be offered/updated.

References

External links

Inq official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Inq Defunct mobile phone manufacturers Software companies of the United Kingdom CK Hutchison Holdings Mobile software Meta Platforms applications Twitter services and applications Software companies established in 2008 2008 establishments in the United Kingdom