January 29th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »
An N-Gage you can’t call with, an PSP with text messaging and mobile
internet components. This was the Gizmondo that will soon be brought to
live again.
The Gizmondo, it was a phone that allowed all kinds of phone use except calling. The specifications where better then Sony’s PSP, that was introduced 6 months later, on a lot of levels. Game development contracts where signed with all kinds of big and small (mobile) game publishers and advert gaming was available. This was the wonder device that Tiger Telematics would use to storm the market of mobile/portable gaming.
But Tiger Telematics failed. Big games skipped the Gizmondo and Sony’s PSP got much more attention. Next to that, the company which was lead by Carl Freer and Stefan Eriksson seemed to be involved in all kinds of shady business which led to the conviction of Stefan Eriksson after he crashed a Ferrari Enzo, which we reported about earlier. This all lead a declaration of bankruptcy for Tiger Telematics in 2006, and so the end of the Gizmondo, we thought…
The Gizmondo device was developed by the English company Plextek. After Tiger Telematics went out of business, the patents and designs of the device went back to Plextek. Now, Plextek announced the return of the Gizmondo on the market. Carl Freer is involved in this project, but Plextek states that Stefan Eriksson has no involvement in the project to bring back the mobile gaming device. The fact that he was released from jail last week is pure coincidence.
Except that the Gizmondo device will return, not much details are known yet. Analysts wonder if the designs will be changed and how the company will cope with getting enough gaming content, which was one of the big problems in the past.
