By Monica Alleven
Monday, January 19, 2009
Zeemote today announced its new CEO and president, Ernie Cormier. Cormier most recently was at Virgin Media in the United Kingdom, and prior to that, he was vice president of product management at Nextel Communications.
Cormier said he was looking for an opportunity to get back into the startup world and Zeemote’s position in the space fit the bill. The team, intellectual property and market also were attractive, he said.
Zeemote just launched its JS1 mobile game controller last year and already it has inked packaging deals with the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson outside the United States. The company also is evaluating direct-to-consumer distribution and is interested in potentially striking deals with U.S. carriers. For carriers, the JS1 is attractive because it encourages more game play and therefore can lead to better data ARPU, he said.
Among Cormier’s initial goals are making sure the company can scale and ship product properly on a worldwide basis; laying out the product roadmap for both hardware and software, which includes building out the software to support more devices; boosting the sales footprint; and mapping out the growth of the company.
The company is hiring a few more sales people around the world and expects it can be cash flow positive by the end of this year. Cormier said the company is considering another funding round to go beyond the growth it has outlined for this year.
Zeemote recently moved into a bigger headquarters in Chelmsford, Mass., and made two key hires. Karen Cambray, previously with Groove Mobile and Be Free, joined the company as CFO and vice president of operations. Glenn Kiladis joined as vice president of global marketing. He previously had roles at Digit Wireless, Logica and CMGI.