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| Tiger Telematics Update Gizmondo Europe Ltd., subsidiary of Jacksonville, Florida-based Tiger Telematics Inc indicated that it is on track with its move into the USA market. Although Tiger's stock price has come under some pressure in reaction to Gizmondo receiving adverse media regarding some of its former employees hitherto unknown past history that recently came to light, the company is far better positioned today than it was three weeks ago with the product launch, added management and the recent appointment of new independent board of directors. The Company's own review of matters is fully and properly disclosed in its current and upcoming regulatory filings. The Company's Board is now comprised of a majority of independent members to provide corporate governance and review. Steve Carroll (Chief Technical Officer and technical creator of the Gizmondo) was appointed to the company as Managing Director. Carroll's appointment follows after 3 years as head of technical development for the Gizmondo in Europe, during a period of major expansion. For the past 2 years he has been CTO of Tiger Telematics Inc and will continue to hold a seat on the board of directors. Carroll, MSc, was formerly Director of Korean high-volume manufacturer, Maxon. His team there was responsible for the products that enabled Vodafone to launch its Pay-As-You-Talk scheme in the UK, which led to sales of over two million units. He was also previously employed at GEC and Marconi, where his team won the Queen's Award for Technology for the development of the world's best-ever selling radio test set. Carroll will be responsible for all Global territories, he will have responsibility for sales strategy and delivery, QA, localisation, manufacturing and distribution. He will work with the Tiger Telematics Inc Board to develop strategy and ensure that it is aligned across all territories. Gizmondo also confirms two additional appointments reporting directly into Carroll. Steven Law is appointed Chief Operating Officer, responsible for world wide operations and localisation infrastructure working in conjunction with the CEO and MD. This role is dealing with strategy and process. He will also be working with the manufacturing and distribution aspects of products. Working with the MD he will develop the infrastructure to manage operations effectively across all territories, including establishing a product delivery tracking system. Law has over 20-plus years experience in all aspects of the games and IT industry and delivering quality products to market. David Levett, Chief Software Architect. Levett founded Altio in December 1999 following 20 years of creating and directing development of commercial software applications. Prior to founding Altio, David was Director of Innovation at Talus Solutions. There, he led initiatives to deliver dynamic pricing and revenue management solutions to leading e-commerce companies. Before that, he spent four years as managing director at Image and Signal Sciences (ISS), a company that provides software architecture and operational research consultancy. Levett has a broad experience in the software industry including developing an image compression and transmission for Reuter's news photos, the speech recognition system in the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, and dynamic ticket pricing systems used by both British Airways and Delta Airlines. He has also worked extensively in real-time systems, parallel and distributed computing, user interfaces, and XML. Having carried out his PhD research in 'Multi-dimensional Multi-resolution Stochastic Optimization', he also holds a bachelor's degree in Physics and Microcomputing from the University of Surrey, England. The growth of video games as a mass market consumer activity is illustrated by the rapid growth of games played on mobile phones and other handheld devices. Overall activity levels remain strong. The company has successfully executed its launch in North America, with the Gizmondo, its games, and satellite navigation package, going on sale on Saturday 22nd October 2005 at selected retail locations and the official website at www.gizmondo.com where it stands on its own merit as the most feature-packed entertainment hardware available. Gizmondo can also confirm it is finalizing new product distribution agreements with a leading company for Russia, and continues to move ahead with plans to launch in mainland Europe. The Gizmondo is unique in the market. Positioned as lifestyle hardware, it delivers unrivalled features and entertainment specification. The satellite navigation software continues to boost retail demand, and the company will be increasing its sales team to cater for this. Global release date for its email service was also announced earlier this month. This latest application expands the communication functionality of the device from text (SMS) and picture (MMS) messages to include a fully-fledged POP3 email service, giving users access to their inbox anywhere within tri-band GSM coverage. As promised, Gizmondo continues to increase its portfolio of games and other software applications. Teams in the US and Europe are working on the unique GPS, gyroscopic camera, and augmented reality features which differentiates the hardware from any other handheld. The first GPS-enabled game to be launched will be Colors, which also uses the GPRS multi-player connectivity of the device. With a strong product pipeline and increasing distribution partnerships, Tiger Telematics pursues with confidence and a determination to continue to build shareholder value through anticipated future profitable growth. Online purchasing has become such a pervasive influence in users' lives that Leadpile.com predicts that video games and handheld console online sales for the upcoming 2005 Holiday season will break all historic records and expects online sales in 2005 to at least double the 2004 season. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Game News :: home page |