Ingram boosts mobility offering with i-mate

Ingram will now carry i-mate’s business-oriented Ultimate 6150 and 8150 models, as well as the consumer-focused JAMA 101 and 201 series.

The phone vendor approached Ingram to distribute its new range after competitor HTC partnered with Brightpoint. Speaking to CRN, Emma Gilmour, group product manager for mobility and communications at Ingram, said that the deal will bolster Ingram’s mobile offering which had shrunk after losing several of its previous mobile vendors.

“We have had a limited choice of mobility devices since losing O2 and Nokia. Bringing i-mate in continues on our overall strategy of being the number one smart phone distributor in Australia,” she said.

“Brightpoint can’t sell i-mate, so we’re hoping to capture some of the phone channel. We haven’t been very successful there. It means that an IT device will get into the phone channel and the IT device will have depth into IT retailers where in the past they haven’t.”

Gilmour claimed that the i-mate will answer demands from resellers seeking to sell Windows mobile devices after O2’s departure from the Australian market.

“There was a gap to our resellers and retailers for a Windows based device. We are the exclusive distributor for Palm, however not everyone likes Palm devices,” she said.

Gilmour claimed i-mate’s strong roadmap and compelling price points have already seen customers embrace the product over the past three days.

"We’ve got two top retailers, Office Works and Dick Smiths, already buying large quantities of the product to put into stores,” she said.