Fring cuts 20%, claims biz surging, blogger bashes

Ah yes, Fring, another me-too mobile VoIP start-up play starts laying off people, while trying to convince everyone else to "Don't worry, be happy." With apologies to Bobby McFerrin [1].

TechCrunch says Fring is laying off 10 people, about 20 percent of total staff (so they had 50 people before the axe came). CEO Avi Schechter says the company is doing well and the layoffs were to insure the company had enough capital to get them through 2009. And oh-by-the-way, we have raised a third round of financing, but can't tell you how much was invested or who invested it; Fring had previously raised $13 million over two previous rounds.

Fring recently cut a deal with Mobilkom Austria to put their client onto phones and claims they are seeing 400,000 new downloads and activations per month. But FMC/UC blogger/guru Ken Camp says he has tried to run the service on numerous devices and has encountered nothing but pain, suffering, and reboots.

If Fring did secure another round of investment capital, we suspect Mobilkom Austria is on the list of contributors.

For more:
- Ken Camp dishes on his bad experiences with Fring. Blog [2].
- Meanwhile, TechCrunch bites down on Fring's personnel cut.  Post [3].

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