IXI Tilting At Ogos
We’ve written a few times in the past about IXI’s ideas for a personal mobile gateway — basically, your phone acting as the connection to the outside world, but that which would allow other devices to connect through it, so they, too, have connectivity. Then you could just carry the right combinations of devices for whatever you’re doing. The idea is appealing in that it offers up a lot of flexibility — but many people point out that the whole concept of carrying more than one device turns them off. Last year, IXI’s first device became available, branded as the Ogo from AT&T Wireless. However, they got the concept backwards. Instead of making the phone the gateway device, they made a pager/text messaging device the gateway (and also didn’t have any other devices to go with it… so it was a gateway for nothing). That makes less sense, because it’s the phone that everyone always wants to have with them. So, it wasn’t a huge surprise when it failed, and Cingular (after taking over AT&T Wireless) killed off the device. Still, IXI seems to be a believer in it, and thinks they can make the Ogo successful internationally. However, if they just leave it as is, it seems likely to face a similar fate elsewhere.
