Buying a failing company and turning it around is very hard to do. benq learned that the hard way when it bought Siemens' mobile division back in 2005. Two years and 600 million dollars saw no reversal of fortune, so BenQ Mobile applied for bankruptcy protection last October.

So it's no surprise that no one's willing to buy the company in its entirety. No one was willing to take over the whole operation, which is why BenQ Mobile is auctioning off pieces of itself.

It's been a sad story for BenQ Mobile, but at least someone gets it. Martin Prager, the insolvency adminstrator (he was responsible for finding the company a way out of bankruptcy) said "We have to acknowledge that the market has decided against BenQ Mobile."