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Obi Worldphone
Company type	Private
Industry	Telecommunications equipment
Founded	2014
Founders	Neeraj Chauhan; Shane Maine; Gordon McMillan; John Sculley;
Defunct	2018
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, US
Area served	Latin America; Saudi Arabia; Thailand; UAE; United Kingdom; Vietnam;
Products	Obi SF1 (2015); Obi SJ1.5 (2015); Obi MV1 (2016); Obi Lifespeed;
Number of employees	70 (2016)

Obi Worldphone, previously Obi Mobiles, was a Silicon Valley smartphone manufacturer founded in 2014 by Neeraj Chauhan, Shane Maine, Gordon McMillan, and John Sculley.^[1] Obi Worldphone manufactured smartphones aimed at the emerging markets^[3] rather than very competitive developed markets.^[4]^[5]

History

The company was launched as Obi Mobiles in 2014. Sculley saw a gap in the market for well-designed budget handsets and got in contact with former Director of Industrial Design, Robert Brunner (now a co-founder of Ammunition Design Group) who came up with the raised screen design found on all Obi smartphones.^[6] Ammunition subsequently designed the chassis and operating system skin the phones run on, "Obi Lifespeed".^[7]

Obi Mobiles started operations in India in July 2014. Following an unsuccessful launch, the company withdrew from India at the beginning of 2015 (with plans re-entering at the end of the year) and relaunched the brand as Obi Worldphone shortly after.^[8]

The newly branded company launched two of their pioneer low-cost smartphones on 27 August 2015.^[9] Both models were based upon Android as their operating system.^[9] Their third phone, the MV1, was announced in February 2016, and was released to Asian, African, Latin American and European markets in March 2016.^[10]^[11]

In July 2015, Obi had a 5.7% smartphone market share in the UAE, making it the company's strongest global market.^[8]

In September 2017, Sculley distanced himself from Obi and said his name was used for PR only.^[1]

Products

SF1

Launched on 27 August 2015, this phone with a raised 5-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels at a PPI of 443 pixels per inch (PPI).^[12] The phone comes with a self-developed fork of the Android Operating System called "Obi Lifespeed".^[7]^[13] The device also features Dolby Audio multi-channel audio, noise cancellation, and utilizes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor, an Adreno 405 GPU, and a 3000 mAh battery. It can access 4G networks. The device comes in 32 GB + 3 GB / 16 GB + 2 GB (respectively Storage and RAM) combinations,^[13] and a choice of black or white. The initial retail price for the device is $199 and comes unlocked.^[14]

SJ1.5

This device was launched at the same time as the SF1, and also has a 5-inch touchscreen display, however a lower resolution, lack of 4G, and lack of some luxuries lends this phone a cheaper $129 retail price.^[14] The device is all plastics in a range of colors and comes with 16 GB of storage and a 3,000 milliamps battery.^[15]^[16] Both the SF1 and SJ1.5 feature a dual SIM tray.^[16]

MV1

The MV1 has a 5-inch Gorilla Glass 3 display with 1280 × 720 (HD) resolution; it runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of storage. It features a dual SIM tray.

Awards

In 2015, Obi Worldphone's SF1 was voted the fifth-best smartphone available in Vietnam in VNExpress' "TechAwards 2015" (Sản phẩm Công nghệ xuất sắc 2015).^[17]^[18]^[19]