New SEC filing reveals "only minor sales" for Gizmondo in June quarter

A new regulatory filing by Tiger Telematics, the US parent company of Gizmondo Europe, has revealed that the firm's sales immediately after the launch of the Gizmondo handheld earlier this year were extremely weak.

The 10-Q document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday provides financial details of the six month and three month periods ended June 30th of this year, which includes the launch of Gizmondo in the UK on March 19th.

Revenues for the six month period - which includes over three months of Gizmondo sales in the UK - were $1.5 million, with the firm admitting that "only minor sales amounts have been recorded" during the period.

That may be something of an understatement regarding the console, which is being sold through a flagship retail store in London's prestigious Regent Street shopping area as well as through a number of retail partners nationwide..

Based on the $1.5 million revenue figure, it seems likely that under 5,000 units of the Gizmondo console were sold during its first three months at retail - and even that figure is optimistic, as it assumes that an extremely high proportion of the units sold were the cheaper Smart Adds enabled devices, and that the vast majority of the revenue came from hardware sales, rather than software and accessories.

However, it should be noted that the company describes the UK launch as being of a "limited production version" of the device, with the US launch in late October described as "full-scale production".

The firm also recently claimed that it had seen a significant spike in sales of the console, around the time that it announced its plans to float on the NASDAQ stock exchange - plans which it says are still proceeding despite the recent departure of key executives Stefan Eriksson and Carl Freer and the subsequent revelations in the press regarding the convictions of several former staff members for their involvement in mafia activities in Sweden.