Samsung UK boss Mark Mitchinson said Samsung had virtually sold out its entire stock until February and revealed that another leading manufacturer is in an even worse position.

Carphone Warehouse chief Charles Dunstone recently told journalists stocks of handsets like the Sony Ericsson T610 were difficult to obtain.

This means when retailers sell out of existing stock there will be nothing to replace it until near the second quarter of 2004.

A leading retailer came to me and said hed take 10000 Samsung products at any price because there just isnt the stock said Mitchinson.

We arent the only ones who are having stock problems. It is a global problem caused by poor communication between networks and manufacturers as well as low supplies.

Mitchinson blamed much of the problem on networks which dont present manufacturers with firm enough forecasts.

At present they are much too vague. We get told what they expect but thats give or take a couple of hundred thousand either way. And we need to be updating forecasts on a rolling month basis he said.

Like last year we are starting to see networks and retailers going into the Golden Quarter with demand rising expensive advertising campaigns kicking in and no product to meet the demand.

Mitchinson warned that that if stores werent careful their poor stock forecasts would affect sales into the new year.

Last year a lot of stores werent able to buy new products that were coming out in the first quarter because they still had a load of stock they hadnt shifted from the Christmas period.

O2 says that the cuts are designed to give national businesses more autonomy.

A spokesman for parent company mmO2 said: When we demerged from BT we needed to have a strong corporate centre.

Now we are much more customer-focused we dont need such a strong support network.

The entire mmO2 organisation employs around 13500 people.

This should have read SIM-only kit.

The car comes with a Sony Ericsson T610 connected to Your Plan with 120 minutes free for the first six months.

A Carphone Warehouse spokeswoman said: Although we dont give out sales figures we can say that we have sold all of our stock. We were also aware of the emphasis and expectations that Nokia has for the device and so we ordered stock accordingly.

The hybrid games player-cum-phone was launched across Europe on October 7 on the back of a multi-million pound television and poster campaign.

Questions had been raised about the wisdom of Nokias new handset with many suggesting that the device would struggle in a gaming market so heavily dominated by Nintendo.

Pre-launch pressure wasnt eased when Nokia announced that it was expecting to see six-figure sales in the UK before Christmas.

Nokia business development manager Ray Haddow said: We are extremely delighted with the early sales of the N-Gage. We have always had a lot of faith in it and I am sure it will continue to prove us right.

(See Sharp End P46).

The P900 is smaller and more powerful than its predecessor. It has 16Mb RAM (compared with 12Mb for the P800) a 32Mb memory card (set against the P800s 16Mb card) a video camera for video playback video-messaging and a 65000-colour screen.

The P900 also looks more like a PDA as the P800s blue plastic exterior has been shelved in favour of a metallic silver casing.

The P900 keypad is still touch-screen however and the electronic flip keypad remains in place. It features Sony Ericssons QuickShare interface and has Bluetooth.

The P900 ships next month and will be positioned at the high end of the market at around the same price as the P800 on launch – 450 SIM-free.

The design shows herons in flight with crystals set in their eyes. Some of the phones were given to guests at Noronhas show during London Fashion Week. The rest will be available for sale later this year through distributors of Noronhas collection.

Chris Evans of Kiss Communications claims he is owed more than 2500 commission by Caudwell Group subsidiary 4U.

Evans is outraged that he has been told that unless he sends a letter confirming he will continue to work with 4U he will not see any of this money.

This is restriction of trade pure and simple says Evans. I am not a big player but I have done some decent business for 4U. But two weeks ago my bookkeeper was told that we wouldnt receive any payments unless we assured 4U that we would work with it again.

I have found 4U hard to work with and it was always bad at paying so I stopped connecting people. There was no point.

However Evans said he never told 4U that he wouldnt work with the company again.

He said his last commission invoice was submitted in July but claimed that it still hasnt been paid.

Evans was told that a six-month clawback period rule was part of his terms and conditions.

He denies this however saying:

There is no way I would have signed something like that. There is no way that I can afford to subsidise handsets for any distributor. I have tried to talk to the 4U reps but they wont tell me anything.

One distributor also said 4U had refused to pay him money he was owed until a clawback period had passed.

4U said: This is a private trading matter. We are operating within the terms and conditions of our contract with the dealer. The contract is designed to protect both 4U and the dealer.

Daniel Everard 19 of Beckenham Kent was fined 150 with 55 costs when he appeared for sentencing at Horseferry Road court on August 11. He worked at the car park as an air conditioning engineer.

Everard admitted the theft from the BMW after being shown CCTV footage of him stealing the 140 Nokia handset from the vehicle. I dont know why I did it it was a five-minute stupid thing he told the court.

In another case a 13-year-old schoolboy has appeared in court accused of robbing train passengers of mobile phones.

The boy from Mitcham in Surrey cannot be named for legal reasons.

He is charged with robbing Nikhil Sumaria of a phone and ring at Norbury and Zade Wilson of cash wallet and travelcard on a train between Thornton Heath and Norbury.

The Abingdon-based distributor joins Hugh Symons Avenir and Fone Logistics in offering the 3G network to dealers.