The Ogo Sucked So Well, IXI Will Concentrate On It
The folly that is IXI Mobile has been well documented here. The company had a rather compelling idea that would essentially let various electronic devices talk to the Internet via a gateway in a users’ phone, but its first product didn’t deliver anything close to that — it was rather dull messaging device with no voice functionality. AT&T Wireless was the only carrier to offer it, and it sold so poorly that Cingular stopped selling it after the two merged. The company thought it could build on this “success” globally, but now, they’re so confident in the Ogo — “Following the success of the device in the US and great global interest in it,” according to the CEO — that they’ve fired a third of the company’s employees, withdrawn its IPO and shut down its other division to focus on the device.
