Fuhu was a company that made the Nabi series of
tablet computer
A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...
s. The company filed for
bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...
, eventually leading to the company's closure on January 9, 2016.
Mattel
Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational corporation, multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company headquartered in El Segundo, California. Founded in Los Angeles by Harold Matson and the husband-and-wife duo of Ruth Handler, ...
later acquired and continued the brand with the Nabi SE for a few years until the Nabi line was quietly discontinued in 2019.
History
Fuhu was founded in 2008 by Robb Fujioka and brothers
John Hui and Steve Hui.
The company name was formed by taking the first two letters of the co-founders' last names.
John Hui previously co-founded computer manufacturer
eMachines
eMachines was a brand of economical personal computers. In 2004, it was acquired by Gateway, Inc., which was in turn acquired by Acer Inc. in 2007. The eMachines brand was discontinued in 2013.
History
eMachines was founded in September 1998 by ...
, and his friends in the hardware business supplied the $1.5 million in seed money for Fuhu's startup.
John Hui advised Fujioka to stay away from hardware development, which had notoriously small profit margins, and only develop software to be licensed to run on other manufacturers' hardware.
The company's early products included digital trading cards called urFooz, a software called urDrive that allowed devices to run applications directly from a USB drive, and Fooz Kids, a mobile device platform designed to give children ages 3 to 10 access to approximately 33,000 kid-friendly areas of the Internet while employing parental controls that prevent them from accessing more adult-oriented sites and services.
The platform was praised by child safety advocates and "
mommy bloggers".
Introduction of the Nabi
In mid-2011,
Foxconn
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (), Trade name, doing business as Hon Hai Technology Group () in Taiwan, Foxconn Technology Group () in China, and Foxconn () internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational electron ...
, a major licensee for Fuhu software, asked Fujioka for ideas to unload a surplus of Foxconn's low-end tablets.
Fujioka and Fuhu CEO Jim Mitchell experimented with loading the Fooz Kids platform on the tablets, but the setup proved too unstable to be marketable.
Enamored of the concept, however, Fujioka and Mitchell ignored Hui's advice and purchased a higher quality, generic tablet on which they loaded the Fooz Kids platform as a prototype.
They added a rubber bumper around the edges of the tablet to protect it from shock damage, which gave the device a butterfly-like appearance. They called the device "Nabi", the
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean
**Korean dialects
**See also: North–South differences in t ...
word for "
butterfly
Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran superfamily Papilionoidea, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together when at rest, and a conspicuous, fluttering flight. The oldest butterfly fossi ...
".
In anticipation of the upcoming
holiday shopping season
A holiday is a day or other period of time set aside for festivals or recreation. ''Public holidays'' are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. Religious holidays are set by religious organisations for their members and are ofte ...
, Fuhu struck a deal with
Toys "R" Us
Toys "R" Us is an American toy, clothing, and baby product retailer owned by Tru Kids (doing business as Tru Kids Brands) and various others. The company was founded in 1948 in Washington, D.C.; its first store was built in April 1948, with i ...
to be the exclusive distributor of the Nabi.
The toy retailer placed an order for 10,000 units of the Nabi, which were delivered a week before Christmas and sold out in two weeks.
After Toys "R" Us followed up with an order for only 15,000 units, decided to end the partnership in January 2012, by stopping production on the Nabi.
Taking out a $10 million loan to continue operations, the company began designing the Nabi 2 for a launch ahead of the 2012 holiday season.
Distributing through
Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...
,
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...
, and
Target
Target may refer to:
Warfare and shooting
* Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports
** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports
** Aiming point, in field artille ...
, Fuhu sold 750,000 units of the Nabi 2.
The success of the Nabi 2 brought the company's sales to $117.9 million in 2012.
In September 2012, Fuhu filed suit against Toys "R" Us, claiming breach of contract, fraud, unfair competition and stealing trade secrets after the toy retailer launched a competing tablet, the Tabeo, the next year.
Fuhu said Toys "R" Us did "virtually no marketing" of the Nabi during the 2011 holiday shopping season and copied features such as the rubber bumper from the Nabi.
Rapid growth
In 2013, Fuhu sold over 2 million units, earning the company the top spot on ''
Inc.'' magazine's list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the United States.
The company began hiring additional staff in its finance department, fueling rumors that it was considering an
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...
.
Based on the company's 2013 revenue of $196 million, experts estimated that the public valuation for Fuhu could exceed $1 billion.
''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...
'' ranked Fuhu at the top of its list of America's Most Promising Companies in January 2014.
The company entered a sponsorship agreement with
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...
driver
Landon Cassill for the
2014 Daytona 500.
In mid-2014, Fuhu repeated at the top of ''Inc.''
's list of 500 fastest-growing privately held companies, which topped the list consecutively in 1989 and 1990.
Decline and bankruptcy
Demand for the Nabi line of tablets slowed in 2014 and 2015 as
Apple
An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
,
Samsung
Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...
, and
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
expanded their tablet lineups with more kid-friendly options and
Comcast
Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...
-owned children's television network Sprout (now renamed
Universal Kids
Universal Kids was an American children's cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast.
The channel launched on September 26, 2005, as PBS Kids Sprout, a preschool-oriented offshoot of ...
) entered the market with its own tablet.
In 2014, Fuhu attempted to jump-start sales with the introduction of the Nabi Dream Tab, ordering 150,000 units, but the device was a commercial failure, leaving Fuhu with a glut of inventory and large debt to manufacturer Foxconn.
A
class action
A class action is a form of lawsuit.
Class Action may also refer to:
* ''Class Action'' (film), 1991, starring Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
* Class Action (band), a garage house band
* "Class Action" (''Teenage Robot''), a 2002 e ...
lawsuit was also filed against the company due to reports of batteries in its Nabi 2 tablets overheating and sometimes catching fire.
In an attempt to mitigate the effects of these difficulties, Fuhu launched a subscription service that allowed users to receive new, exclusive content on a Nabi device and choose to return or upgrade the device at the expiration of the subscription.
The company also launched the Nabi Big Tab, a large-screen tablet Fuhu executives said was meant to facilitate a shared, family experience around tablet content such as interactive stories or streaming video.
Fuhu did not market test the Big Tab, which reviewed poorly.
Among other issues, the battery lasted less than an hour between charges.
Many retailers refused to carry it, and through the 2014 holiday shopping season, Fuhu sold only 4,000 units, mostly through its web site.
In November 2015,
Bloomberg
Bloomberg may refer to:
People
* Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer
* Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian
* Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician a ...
reported that Fuhu had cancelled Nabi shipments to Walmart, Target, Toys "R" Us, and Best Buy amid a financial dispute with its hardware supplier, Foxconn.
''Inc.'' later reported that Fuhu owed Foxconn between $60 million and $100 million, and the supplier had refused to ship any more tablets until payment was made.
The company filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...
on December 7, 2015, saying one of its lenders, Tennenbaum Capital Partners, had collected a debt of $6.5 million, leaving Fuhu with insufficient capital to continue operations.
Toy maker
Mattel
Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational corporation, multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company headquartered in El Segundo, California. Founded in Los Angeles by Harold Matson and the husband-and-wife duo of Ruth Handler, ...
tendered a
stalking horse offer of $9.5 million for the company and eventually bought it at auction for $21.5 million.
Products

Devices from the Nabi line ran on
Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
's
Android operating system overlaid with Fuhu's
proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...
designed specifically for children.
An unrestricted parents mode can be accessed through a passcode.
The Nabi 2, launched in 2012, featured 8
GB of internal storage, an
Nvidia
Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
Tegra
Tegra is a system on a chip (SoC) series developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. The Tegra integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit (CPU), graphics pr ...
system-on-chip
A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and da ...
, and a touch screen and weighed .
It also segmented its Nabi line by releasing the Nabi, Jr. that was aimed at preschool-age children and the Nabi XD that was aimed at pre-teens and early teenagers that year.
In October, Fuhu launched
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
and
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (nicknamed Nick) is an American pay television channel and the flagship property of the Nickelodeon Group, a sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on April 1, 1979, as the first ca ...
-themed Nabi devices.
At the 2014
Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...
, Fuhu showcased the third generation of its Nabi product, the Nabi Dream Tab.
The product was developed in conjunction with
DreamWorks Animation
DreamWorks Animation LLC (DWA, also known as DreamWorks Animation Studios or simply DreamWorks) is an American animation studio, owned by Comcast's NBCUniversal as part of Universal Pictures, a division of Universal Studios, Inc, Universal Stud ...
and included content featuring popular DreamWorks characters, along with ''
Angry Birds
''Angry Birds'' is a Finnish media franchise created by Rovio Entertainment, and owned by Sega. The game series focuses on the titular flock of colorful angry birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. Inspired by the game ''Cr ...
'' and
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (CN) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the Cartoon Network, Inc., a sub-division of the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks division of Warner Bros. Discovery. It launched on ...
.
DreamWorks pushed out regular content updates, including exclusive content, for the device, which was also capable of receiving content from Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network.
Fuhu said the Dream Tab had comparable computing power to the
iPad
The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...
.
In late 2014, Fuhu announced the Nabi Big Tab, available with a or screen.
A special enclosure was designed to facilitate transportation of the large devices – which weighed a minimum of – from room to room.
In 2016, Mattel launched the Nabi SE, the first and only tablet in the Nabi lineup to be released after Mattel's acquisition of Fuhu.
The SE runs on a
MediaTek
MediaTek Inc. (), sometimes informally abbreviated as MTK, is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that designs and manufactures a range of semiconductor products, providing chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, h ...
MT8127 system-on-chip
and comes with a capacitive touch screen and 16GB of internal storage, expandable with a
microSD
Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary hardware, proprietary, non-volatile memory, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of port ...
card.
In addition to the base SE model, branded variants of the SE based on Mattel properties such as
American Girl
American Girl is an American line of dolls released on May 5, 1986, by Pleasant Company. The dolls portray eight- to fourteen-year-old girls of various ethnicities, faiths, nationalities, and social classes throughout different time periods ...
,
Barbie
Barbie is a fashion doll created by American businesswoman Ruth Handler, manufactured by American toy and entertainment company Mattel and introduced on March 9, 1959. The toy was based on the German Bild Lilli doll, Bild Lilli doll which Hand ...
and
Hot Wheels
Hot Wheels is an American media franchise and brand of scale model model car, cars invented by Elliot Handler and introduced by his company Mattel on May 18, 1968. It was the primary competitor of Matchbox (brand), Matchbox until Mattel bought ...
were also released,
alongside a separate
Fisher-Price
Fisher-Price, Inc. is an American company that produces educational toys for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, headquartered in East Aurora, New York, East Aurora, New York (state), New York. It was founded in 1930 during the Great Depression ...
edition for preschoolers.
Accessories
With profit margins as low as $5 per unit, Fuhu relied on accessories for the Nabi to increase its profits.
Each Nabi tablet featured a small grid on the reverse that could hold rubberized block letters called KINABI, allowing children to customize their devices with short words or names.
Fuhu also created Nabi Frames, stickers that surrounded the tablet screen, featuring characters from popular children's television shows.
Other accessories included cases, backpacks, screen protectors, car chargers with cords long enough to reach the back seat of a vehicle, and cameras.
In December 2012, Fuhu launched a line of headphones for kids.
Dubbed Nabi Notes, the headphones were designed to work with the Nabi tablet line to limit the headphones' volume to 80
dB or less to prevent damage to children's hearing.
In 2014, the company added the Nabi Karaoke and a wireless printer to its lineup of accessories for the Nabi.
Philanthropy
Fuhu created a charity, Nabi Inspire, meant to raise awareness and provide support for families affected by
autism spectrum
Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...
disorder through the initiative Gifted 10K.
References
{{Reflist
2008 establishments in California
2016 disestablishments in California
Computer companies established in 2008
Computer companies disestablished in 2016
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015
Defunct computer companies based in California
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Defunct computer hardware companies