Gizmondo Execs land at Xero Mobile
Whenever a company asks us to modify anything on the site, we always conduct some research to determine if the item that offends the company is in fact false. Early yesterday morning, Xero Mobile asked us to remove a reader comment that was, in their view, incorrect.
The comment suggested that Stefan Ericksson -- the now-jailed exec who totalled a million-dollar Enzo Ferrari and multi-million dollar games company Gizmondo -- still held an executive position at MVNO Xero Mobile.
We removed the comment from Joystiq because we could find no proof that it was true. However, in doing this research, we did turn up information about Xero Mobile's connection to Ericksson's now-defunct Gizmondo.
The most reliable source we could find on the subject was the venerable Financial Times, which states that "Peter Lilley, who headed up Gizmondo's Smart Adds business unit, David Levett who was formerly chief software architect at Gizmondo, and Rich Clayton, US producer for Gizmondo, are involved in setting up a new company called Xero Mobile, based in Beverley Hills."
Plenty of others (Sean Ryan, Om Malik, Moco News, The Inquirer, to name a few) have chimed in on the linkage between the companies, and have further noted the similarities between Gizmondo's "Smart Adds" technology and the business model of Xero Mobile, which will provide free cell phone service to users who are willing to watch or listen to advertisements in exchange for that service.
In short, we could find no link between Ericksson and Xero Mobile, though ample linkages exist between Xero and Gizmondo, according to multiple sources, some of them quite reliable.
