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At Nokia´s annual general meeting in Helsinki last month chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila said: "In addition to continuous growth in voice other industries like music and digital imaging are quickly becoming integral."
Nokia previously predicted the world market would grow 10 per cent in 2006. However "strong subscriber growth" and increased sales in Asia and Africa suggest the market could grow a further five per cent this year.
Nokia predicts 80 per cent of the next billion subscribers will come from Asia and Africa.
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The service can be downloaded for free from the emoze web site to any compatible mobile phone. It gives users access to home and work e-mails as well as Personal Information Manager data such as contact information and diary dates.
Commenting on the launch Emoze vice-president of marketing and business development Doron Cohen said:
"More than 50 million wireless PDAs and smartphones capable of receiving push e-mail were sold in 2005 and another 80 million will be sold this year alone."
However he noted that there are only around 10 million subscribers to push-email services and most of them are limited to employees of Fortune 1000 companies.
"Emoze is targeted at the rest of the world" he claimed. "It covers hundreds of millions of potential users currently untouched by all other solutions."
The technology works with any Microsoft Mobile or Symbian device with a GPRS or other data connection with Microsoft Outlook and POP3 online e-mail services such as Hotmail Yahoo! and Gmail.
It will support Palm devices and MacOS and Linux platforms within months claimed the company.
Harrison assumes his position immediately. De Bezieux is stepping down from the board to begin his new role as chairman and chief executive of Virgin Mobile France.
According to Britain´s police forces the number of fixed penalty notices issued to drivers caught using mobiles on the road has risen from 80000 in 2004 to more than 140000 last year.
To clamp down on the illegal use of handsets in cars the £30 fine introduced in December 2003 will rise to £60 next year. Drivers will also incur three points on their driving licence in an attempt to deter them.
The law was introduced after research showed using a handheld mobile phone quadrupled the risk of having a collision.
"The W700i builds on the legacy of the first Walkman phone the W800i" said Sony Ericsson head of sales and marketing Jan W¤reby.
He added: "This phone will appeal to anyone who wants a quality music player in their phone for occasional listening."
The phone available in titanium-gold comes with a memory stick PRO duo for extra storage. It comes with 256MB of memory equivalent of 6CDs´ worth of music and will be in-store in the next couple of months.
Both Dextra Solutions and Data Select have been notified of Nokia audits in recent weeks as dealers and distributors have warned that the market has been flooded with fake Nokia accessories.
Nokia director of communications Mark Squires explained that it was a general stock audit to ensure that distributors adhered to correct stock levels stock processing and stock flow as well as to verify the authenticity of the stock they carry.
"The audit is intended to make sure that they are doing their jobs properly as well as to check for counterfeit stock" he said.
"Distributors have to make sure they maintain a certain level of stock so that the industry isn´t starved."
Squires said it was a random audit of its distribution partners.
Eric White marketing director at Data Select parent company Phones International said: "Nokia is looking for counterfeit products. It doesn´t mention that on the audit letter but one of the elements of the audit is to search out fake stock."
Dextra Solutions CEO Mark Ormerod said:
"We welcome the Nokia audit and any move that prevents counterfeiting and helps the Nokia brand and the industry´s credibility. We have processes in place to ensure that counterfeit stock does not get into our supply chain."
Unique Distribution marketing manager Graham Jelfs said: "We´re aware that there are problems with counterfeit Nokia products.
"We are doing our best to support Nokia in any way we can and ensure that such products don´t come into our supply chain."
The quantity of fake stock has increased as counterfeiters have become more sophisticated and policing has become more relaxed.
Go Mobile managing director Iain Humphrey said: "I have never found it anything but a problem. Nokia seems to have relaxed lately and it is time it got tougher. There are too many fake accessories in the market."
Elite managing director Ajay Gokani said: "There is so much out there. The quality is so good now. This is a good move. When we buy Nokia stock off its partners we want to be sure that we don´t get caught out."
According to Gokani Nokia used to offer a verification process of stock through its Nokia service centres but withdrew the service six months ago.
The service was launched on the back of research that discovered a third of SMEs have not reviewed mobile costs for two years or more.
The research conducted by YouGov and T-Mobile also found 69 per cent of SME managers believed it would be easier to predict monthly bills and control business costs more effectively if all mobile voice data and text services were combined in one simple plan.
Orange would not be drawn on numbers but said that it would not hesitate to cut off dealers and distance resellers that did not meet its criteria for value connections.
Orange cut off two dealers one direct Orange reseller and one indirect last month.
"We are reviewing our position with a number of dealers" said An Orange spokesperson. "No cuts have been made yet but they will come. No decision has yet been made about numbers. It is unclear whether we will make only a few cuts at a time or many cuts at once."
Orange started an internal process last year to identify dealers and distance resellers that were delivering low-value connections. That process is now completed. It will examine the data about each and every Orange dealer and choose which to retain and which to fire next month.
Orange´s assessment of its dealer base rests on customer lifetime value data which tells the network how much profit it makes on each customer for both direct and third-party connections.
Orange will use the data to set targets for all its partners and will drop dealers that do not meet its targets.
Orange head of independent retail Chris Hough told Mobile News in January: "We have paid good money for commissions because we want to reward dealers not consumers. We will strengthen our relationships with the dealers that bring us good value business but we won´t hesitate to cull a few that fall below that threshold."
Earlier this month Orange signed 16 of its closest independent dealers to its new Specialist Partner Programme which will be phased over the next eight months to replace its longstanding Orange Business Partner scheme.
Orange´s specialist partners will receive a revenue share based on customer spend and have access to SIM-free Orange stock. Orange will recruit more dealers to the programme over the coming months based on the data from its internal dealer assessment.
l Orange has refused to rule out the possibility that it would price-match T-Mobile´s Flext tariffs with its Orange Value Promise (OVP) but said that such a move was not imminent.
Sources revealed last week that Orange was preparing to price-match Flext and/or put more money behind its animal packages in an attempt to stave off the flow of custom to T-Mobile.
An Orange spokesman responded: "There are no firm plans to add Flext to the OVP at the moment."
The campaign features TV print and outdoor advertising and runs until April 28. All marketing will focus on T-Mobile tariffs and services and be themed around the forthcoming World Cup football competition. The Nokia 6280 will also feature heavily as will T-Mobile football content.
"The FIFA world Cup is already generating great excitement among our core target audiences" said Phones 4U marketing director Jim Slater. "We are delighted to be partnering with T-Mobile to communicate our bespoke FIFA World Cup activity via an integrated TV press and outdoor campaign."
All marketing material will feature Phones 4U´s marketing spokesman Jack´.
O2 500 offers 500 minutes of cross-network anytime minutes; 100 text picture or video messages to any network; free voicemail in the UK and rollover of unused minutes and messages to the next month. The tariff is available for £35 a month on an 18-month contract until June 2006.
O2 Double Talkalotmore doubles the standard Talkalotmore pre-pay service so that customers get 300 UK off-peak minutes with a £15 monthly top-up and 600 minutes with a £30 monthly top-up.
l O2 said it had to recall just 8000 X1 handsets after three customers complained that the devices overheated and posed a fire risk. O2 has sold 140000 of the handsets since launch in September 2003 but the network said the majority of X1 customers had already upgraded to new devices. It has replaced the 8000 active X1 devices still on the market with BenQ-made X2i handsets.
An O2 spokesman said: "140000 X1 handsets were sold but we stopped selling it last year so we have only had 8000 returns. Most customers have upgraded by now."