Today's a sad day for employees of BenQ Mobile. Forbes has revealed that the bankrupt German handset business of Taiwan's BenQ Corporation will be split up and sold after a failed bid to turn the struggling company around. This was announced by the company's insolvency administrator on Sunday.

"There is no longer a realistic chance of it being sold as a whole," spokesman Martin Prager said, confirming a report in Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The Munich-based company filed for insolvency protection in September, a year after the Taiwanese firm took over the struggling unit from Siemens AG.

Prager declined to comment on the fact that splitting up the firm means that almost all of the 3,000 jobs at the firm would be lost for good. Around 550 former BenQ Mobile workers have already signed up with other companies, some of them with Siemens. Forbes reports that thanks to a transitional arrangement largely financed by Siemens, the remaining employees will keep on receiving most of their previous wages for up to a year.