Tiger Telematics’s Gizmondo Europe division picked MapInfo’s Envi...
Tiger Telematics’s Gizmondo Europe division picked MapInfo’s Envinsa location services platform for the Gizmondo handheld entertainment device. It said the global location-based services (LBS) provided for Gizmondo would include mapping, routing and geocoding. Envinsa will also be used to…
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provide data for location-based games including the previously announced Colors. And the platform will be used to give “closest participating store” information for users opting into the new added- value Smart Adds system to be launched for the device this year, Gizmondo Europe said. Envinsa is available now for key markets globally and will be used to support Gizmondo service rollouts first in the U.K., Germany, France, Spain and Italy, with other markets -- including the U.S. and Australia -- to follow at an unspecified date. MapInfo CEO Mark Cattini said Envinsa was now “being deployed in organizations throughout the world to locate new customers, better service existing customers and improve operational efficiency across the entire organization.” Gizmondo Managing Dir. Carl Freer said the LBS functionality was “just one of the areas that sets us apart” from other handheld entertainment devices. Gizmondo started shipping in the U.K. and the company said launches in N. America and continental Europe will follow this spring. Offering what may be the first optimistic forecast from the U.S. investment community, TerraNova analyst Boris Markovich said in a research report that “if the company can ship over 3 million units in its first year, we estimate it could garner as much as 10% of the handheld gaming market, making it the 3rd serious [new] mobile platform development option in the market,” along with the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). Markovich noted that Gizmondo Europe recently said it had signed 3 deals that together should bring more than one million units of the handheld to 5 countries in the Asia- Pacific region. He said that with the launch of the Gizmondo in Europe in Feb. and the U.S. in April, “the company already has almost 2 million units planned for its first year.” He said that, “in earlier printed reports, the company has gone on record with some preliminary plans for up to 3.5 million units in the first year.”