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I-Mate's Ultimate End?

I-mate, the maker of the “Ultimate” series of uber-devices (That’s what they call them, not necessarily our opinion of them, although they do look very sweet), experienced lay-offs in several key areas on Friday.

As previously reported on Engadget, Boy Genius and others, i-mate’s team in Redmond, WA lost their entire engineering, QA, and technical writing departments. Serveral executives, although not given the ax, decided to take the opportunity to freshen up their résumés as well.

The scuttlebutt is that the cuts were due to the Ultimate devices not being sent to the retail world in the targeted time frame as well as carriers being resistant to selling the handhelds themselves. We know they've been on the ropes since at least July.

The good news is that you should still be able to buy unlocked phones from i-mates website.