BusinessWeek’s got a puff piece on Xero Mobile, the second coming of Gizmondo I wrote about earlier this week. It repeats the company’s projections that it will 5 million users by the end of 2007, and will generate $1.5 billion in revenues “in its third year” (2008, I presume, but in any case, good luck with that).
The biggest red flag: Xero says it only needs $190 million to get going, but its customer-acquisition plans this year are to give out 1 million free cell phones to college kids, which BW says will be “equipped with Bluetooth, WiFi, and the ability to run video”. It then plans to give out 4 million in 2007. That’s a hell of a lot of handset subsidies.
The “plan” then is to send kids four video ads per day, and in exchange for watching each ad, they’ll get between one and five minutes of free airtime. So that’s a maximum of 600 minutes, a minimum of 120, essentially — keep in mind it’s pretty easy to find plans that offer 600 peak minutes and unlimited nights and weekends here in the US for about $40. And judging by the way I see students using their phones when I go to the UT campus here in Austin, they’re having no trouble paying their bills.
The kicker here is the last paragraph, where BW quotes a startup adviser who says Xero’s shares are risky. That’s quite a revelation, considering they note in the first graf that Xero has gone public with no product, customers or revenue.
[tags]mobile, xero, gizmondo[/tags]
This is a SCAM , it involves Carl Freer who is the main figure in the operations plus other crooks from Gizmondo. No words can be used to fully describe the criminality of these people , here some , MAFIA connections , robbed the company of least $10m directly , paid friends salaries for doing nothing($3m), sold company stock , shortened the life out of the company.
America needs to wake up and get its federal authorities to realize these people should be spending years behind bars
Xero Mobile will offer the best service ever i believe. Do not judge the company by who they are, judge them by what they offer…
As a entrepenuer myself, i feel that this company HAS MAJOR POTENTIAL in the industry…
What more can the average student want. The company will offer the following:
A. Excellent and more than affordable pricing for minutes.
B. A chance to get exclusive offers through their cellular advertising.
C. Great NEW high tech phones - every college students dream.
D. Service all across the nation.
E. Usage of todays newest technology on or off campus - VoIP and more!!!!
How can you go wrong. No other cellular company has come close….I cant believe the…they will truely change the cell phone era…
Since FDuffy has his facts in order as is apparent from his posting, why don’t you enlighten the rest of us on what you know about these people. Remember, I said facts not what is in the media.
Iconic, the facts are that money invested in Gizmondo was stolen from its investors. Why don’t you explain the Northern Lights deal so we can understand it? This is where top Gizmondo execs setup a fictitious company, and then gave themselves 3.5 million dollars to buy what Gizmondo already owned. How about explaining the race horse, the Russian Isis Modeling Agency, Rolex giveaways, money to friends for nothing, not paying employees, leaving employees with bills, buying a typing tutor for a device without a keyboard, cocaine, salaries for top execs at a highly profitable company, the constant lies, theft, immigration violations, arrests, convictions, jail time served for assault, counterfeiting, the hiring of known criminals, and the theft of intellectual property. I’m sure that a few of these items have been exaggerated by the media, after all, that’s what they do. These are still the same Gizmondo folks that we have all learned to love.
Say Amar, get a Rolex?
Another MVNO Takes Aim At The Free-Cell-Service-With-Ads Model…
A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) called Xero Mobile is better known for its connections to the…
[...] nevertheless It’s not news that Bill Gates is the richest person in America, according to Forbes magazine’s annual list of the nation’s 400 richest people, released yesterday. He has been for 13 years. Barring a second Stone Age in which computers are good only for hurling at other cavemen, Gates will always be… This is worth your time also immtech Scientific Collaborators Receive $21.3 Million (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance) Immtech Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that a scientific consortium led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is to receive $21.3 million from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop drugs for fighting African sleeping sickness and Leishmania. I heard a rumour another MVNO Takes Aim At The Free-Cell-Service-With-Ads Model A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) called Xero Mobile is better known for its connections to the notorious Gizmondo gaming device, but its business plan is equally sketchy. It says that it will offer free phones and service to users, in exchange for sending them ads. The concept is questionable — while ad-supported mobile content is a decent idea, it’s hard to imagine Xero generating enough revenue per user to make the venture profitable — as is Xero’s supposed implementation of it. However, the idea’s attracted the interest of some other people, who want to move forward with a similar idea in Europe, with an MVNO called Blyk. The founders come from a little more credible stock than Xero’s: one is the former president of Nokia, the other the chairman of a Scandinavian advertising agency. Still, that does little to answer the general skepticism about this business model. The people behind Blyk say they’ll send targeted ads to users, and they’ll be adds that offer value, rather than ones that are simply tolerated as a non-financial cost of service. They say they’re doing a lot of work to make them a natural part of the user experience and unintrusive, so ads in ringtones probably aren’t on the table. But the overall question remains: will they be able to generate enough revenue per user to cover the costs of providing free service, let alone to profit? Furthermore, will they be able to offer a service that’s worth using, even if it is free? If the service comes with plenty of strings attached, like unreasonable limits on free calls or messages, it won’t fly. And there’s something of a chicken-and-egg problem: they need to get a large enough base of users to have an inventory that’s attractive to advertisers, but they can’t attract users without the free service, which requires paying the costs of airtime from suppliers. Blyk’s attracted 30 million euros in VC, but looking at the way companies like Mobile ESPN, Amp’d and Helio have burned through their cash — and not attracted huge numbers of users — it’s hard to imagine that will be enough.Did you know that Model means zoology. An animal whose appearance is copied by a mimic. I also noted that [...]