2023-08-15 11:07:46
Digitization everywhere, but many millions of people are dependent on rapid technological development. Ordering train tickets online or doing banking transactions over the Internet, they don’t have these options. It is estimated that around 50 million seniors in the European Union do not own a computer or smartphone. A gap that actually promises big business. It is all the more surprising that the heavyweights in telecommunications have so far neglected the potentially huge target group. Small providers, on the other hand, have been on the radar for a long time – like the Austrian senior cell phone manufacturer Emporia.
In April 1991, the Austrian qualified engineer Albert Fellner founded the company with a touch of Silicon Valley flair. Because the company was housed in the garage of his parents’ house in Linz. The former husband of today’s managing director and sole owner Eveline Pupeter acted as an intermediary. He imported landline phones, answering machines, and fax machines and shipped them to electronics stores. Apparently no business model for the future. With the mobile phone boom in the 1990s, the idea of what a niche that would ensure economic survival could look like came up.
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