There's no prizes for guessing what prompted the company to effectively wind down, which can be summed up as commoditization. After all, if a smartphone ecosystem backed by Microsoft can't succeed in the face of cheap Android handsets, what chance does a tiny European startup have? In the announcement, co-founder Rodrigo Silva-Ramos threw some shade at the industry's big boys, saying that they achieved their position "without much concern for innovation and without being concerned by the needs of [their] users."

Don't feel too sorry for Geeksphone's engineers, since they've all found new jobs working for Silent Circle. That's the privacy-focused firm that the business teamed up with to build the ultra-secure Blackphone -- a partnership that was dissolved just a few months ago. In addition, most of the rest of the company's employees will transition over to geeks!me, a wearable technology company that's developing a new fitness tracking smartwatch.