Chris Hough has left Mainline Digital Communications following a six-month interim directorship.

Hough joined Mainline in August from Orange where he was head of independent retail.

Mainline managing director Andrew Boden said: Chris came here with a clear insight of the industry and a unique perspective on the independent channel. He has helped me to review our current structure and has recommended and helped to implement changes that will enable us to build on the successes of recent years.

Boden said that Houghs exit comes on the back of Mainlines motys successful year to date.

Mainline is in the process of making the final two appointments to its team having restructured its field sales team at the end of last year.

That process is almost complete said Boden. We have recruited all but two of the new team and we expect everyone to be in position by the middle of February. We have been very pleased with the recruitment process the transition phase and with the reaction of our dealer customers to the improvements.

He added: Our aim is to ensure that dealers working with Mainline are in a prime position to satisfy the requirements of Orange strengthen their commercial relationship and thereby protect and enhance their own business at the same time. The significant contribution made by Chris has helped us to create the platform needed to build on what we have achieved so far.

Nokia unveiled a range of new slimline handsets at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.
Sony Ericsson Motorola and Samsung have all seen their popularity jump thanks to the popularity of their slimline ranges. Nokia which lost its number one slot in the UK to Sony Ericsson last year seems to be playing catch-up with top handsets such as the RAZR.
Dealers for their part view Nokia s latest designs as a direct response to increased competition from rival manufacturers.
Matt Chambers owner of Edenbridge-based dealership The Phone Chamber said: Nokia s trying to fight off competition from Samsung in particular. Sony Ericsson prides itself on its Walkman handsets and Samsung has proven that its reliability is much better than Nokia s. Nokia seems to have a real problem at the moment because its market share has nosedived.
Faisal Sheikh owner of Fone Doctors in central London claimed Nokia is feeling pressure after a disastrous 2006. Nokia is pinning a lot of its hopes on the N95 he said. It is vital for Nokia that it does well. Sony Ericsson wiped the floor with Nokia last year and that s why there is so much riding on this.
Sheikh claimed Nokia struggled to match rivals in terms of design and functionality during 2006 .
In terms of style Sony Ericsson is the top dog he said. There was no killer handset for Nokia last year and the fact that its handsets run into software problems on a regular basis doesn t help its cause.
Nokia director of communications Mark Squires denied that the manufacturer s new releases are an attempt to fight off competition but conceded that Nokia is responding to consumer demand in terms of its new handset designs.
The Nokia N76 model ticks all of the Nseries boxes in terms of form factor flip fold and slide he said. Rather than fighting off competition from our rivals it just seems logical to have slimmer products in our range. We want to make sure that we re always offering the user plenty of choice.
But opinion is split on Nokia s new designs.
Chambers sees it as an intelligent move on the grounds that Nokia is at last responding to the market and listening to consumer demand.
It s a pleasant surprise that Nokia is releasing a slimline range. The slimmer phones that Samsung has released in the past couple of years have sold extremely well so they are just following a successful path he said.
Sheikh on the other hand claimed Nokia has already fallen behind rivals for innovation and design. According to him Nokia s research and development team needs to boost an ailing collection.
Nokia is definitely in need of something innovative and it has missed a trick with these new launches said Sheikh. Recently it seems to have released too many phones with too little real quality while other manufacturers are releasing handsets more selectively that are very high in quality. Nokia seems to have gone from a quality company to a quantity company.
Top of the new range is the Nokia N76 flip-phone which includes external keys to control its music features and can store up to 1500 tracks. The N76 is 13.7mm thick just 0.3mm slimmer than the original RAZR handset launched in 2005. It is expected to hit UK stores during Q1 with a SIM-free guide price of 262 before tax.
Also on show and slated for a Q1 release in the UK was Nokia s remodelled N93i handset which is 3mm slimmer than the original N93 and doubles up as a video camera.
Satu Ehrnrooth head of Nokia s Nseries cameras category says: Video can become a similar kind of mass-market phenomenon as mobile photography. The N93i is the ideal device for user-created video content because it is a connected digital camcorder. You can upload video to the web without altering the original size of the content.
The N73i includes high-quality video capture a 3.2 megapixel camera and a swivel screen. It is expected to ship to dealers during Q1 with a pre-tax SIM-free sales price of about 404.
Nokia also displayed its forthcoming Internet tablet the N800 at the show and its first fully integrated commercially available NFC (near field communications) handset the 6131 NFC (see Techwatch page 24).
The N800 is faster than its forerunner the 770 and includes a full touch-screen and a built-in camera. It is expected to sell at around 207.
The 6131 NFC enables information-sharing payment and ticketing capabilities. Other features include a built-in music player an FM stereo radio and a 1.3 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom. The 6131 NFC is expected to be available in Q1 to selected markets at 262 SIM-free.

The news that south-west dealership JAG is set to spend up to £50000 on retraining all its store staff reignites the debate over how aggressive staff should be when they sell and how to get good staff in the first place.
JAG carried out mystery shops on all its 81 stores and found that its staffs sales performances were well under par. Staff were failing when speaking to and selling to customers said MD John George.
JAG headquartered in Cornwall is implementing a sales training programme for its 240-strong workforce and is looking for a training company to implement it.
We will be investing between £20000 and £50000 to improve sales techniques and ability he said.
Aggressive sales
George appears to be looking to make employees more aggressive when selling in store in order to boost trade in an increasingly tough retail environment.
But high street chain Phones 4U which has traditionally had a reputation as the mobile phone retailer with the hardest sell in-store reckons that aggressive sales actually hinder performance. Instead the chain aims for better targeting.
There are two types of salesman: those who stand by and watch the customer and those who attract the customer said Phones 4U operations director Tom Shorten. We do a forensic analysis of the customers needs to make sure they get what they want. JAG is absolutely right to retrain its staff but to look for an aggressive sales approach is wrong.
According to Shorten good customer service is not something you can just drop into the store culture.
You have to go through the training process all the time every six or 12 months he says. Its expensive but it is a great investment with a great return. If staff are trained and knowledgeable and successful they will be motivated.
As if to prove his point Phones 4U has the lowest 14-day returns rate in the industry lower than network stores rival multiple retailers and the independent dealer community.
As well as training and retraining staff on a regular basis Phones 4U has set up a new recruitment team to make sure it attracts high-calibre employees in the first place.
But the chain has also come under fire along with all the network and multiple retailers for poaching staff from independent dealers in the past. Poaching is typically worst in January and February after the Christmas rush and especially now as networks roll out their own stores.
Greener grass
The lure is too great for some store staff claimed dealers. Intek managing director Manny Hussain is one who has felt the impact.
Small independents suffer to a larger degree he said. If a large retailer loses a few of its top guys it is not such a big deal but to an independent it can have a huge impact.
But some dealers said that poaching does not guarantee staff quality.
Poaching is not always a safe bet because the staff arent guaranteed to be up to scratch said Matt Chambers director of Edenbridge dealership The Phone Chamber.
Phil Rider managing director of The Digital Phone Company added: We rarely poach because our past experience has been a disaster.
One answer is to develop your own staff. Its always best to promote from within provided the person is up to the job noted Hussain.
But this is no panacea. We tend to promote our own staff but recently we have run out of opportunities said George. We are now forced to promote people who we originally wanted to let mature more at the company.
The problem mobile retailers face is that as the number of stores increases the talent pool is more diluted. Staff quality in general goes down with a resulting rise in poaching of higher calibre people.
Virgin Mobile director of retail Paul Williams said: Its not so much a matter of finding quality staff its about keeping them because of all the poaching. We try to do this with an accreditation programme with salary increases along the way.
It also means upward pressure on wage costs but with no guarantee of better performance. George admitted that sales staff expect more with less experience and expertise.
People expect to work six months and be considered for a store manager position he said. A while ago people expected it to take three or four years. There is a big gap between sales assistant and store manager.
It does no favours to staff either. Over-promoting a top sales guy can be the ruination of them which we have found out many times to our cost added Hussain. Many people get a rude awakening when they are promoted.

Dealers put through so few Orange connections that one leading distributor questioned whether any UK distributor was making the grade for the network.
He said: Volume is really bad. I would be surprised if any distributor is trading at the minimum distribution performance at the moment.
Another said: It has slowed down for everybody. Orange won t win any awards for volume.
Orange pulled money from its commission package at the start of December and has not reinstated it. Dealers also complained that they cannot match the offers available to customers on the high street.
One Blackburn-based dealer said: I can t offer a customer more than 400 minutes on a 12-month contract while Orange Retail can. I have to offer 18-month contracts and customers don t want them.
Orange s own retail stores matched last year s performance on pre-pay and trumped the figures for December 2005 on contract.
An Orange spokesman said: It was a really good Christmas for Orange Retail. Figures were up on contract because of the number of exclusive handsets we had.

The distributor has set up a team of six Unity account managers and will recruit a finance manager to deal with all credit control issues in the next three weeks.
Hugh Symons project development manager Sophie Vincent said: Its about surviving in the market. Its changing at such a rate. There is a lot of emphasis on customer lifetime value. We are ensuring that we have a business to build on for the future by looking at ways of innovating. We have introduced a dedicated account management team that can provide dealers with support from stock control to event management.

Large 3 dealers and distributors were stretched and angry last week as they attempted to meet the Friday (January 12) deadline for proofs. High-volume connectors such as EBS which connects more than 10000 customers to 3 each month via distance-sellers are most at risk from large clawbacks. European Telecom and Fone Logistics are also at risk.
3 has yet to state clearly the terms of clawback for failure to submit the correct proofs but issued a bulletin to its channel partners late on the afternoon of December 22.
Dealers were angry at the short notice with many of them shutting up shop in the few days before Christmas and not opening again until January 2.
One dealer said: It said that it will claw back any proofs that are not forthcoming whether or not the customer disconnects or not. It is horrendous.
Another dealer said: It is really bad news especially as Christmas wasn t great anyway. Dealers didn t get the notice until the last minute before closing for Christmas and many haven t opened up again until early January. It will be a massive amount of work to get it all in and many dealers won t be able to. There will be big losses.
Normally dealers get clawed back if a customer disconnects and they can t provide the right proofs on disconnection. In this instance dealers get penalised for not having correct proofs whether the customer disconnects or not.
3 said it was good business and a tactic to clamp down on fraud in the dealer channel.
A 3 spokesman said: We have said we will cease trading with dealers that consistently fail to abide by our terms and conditions and do not meet our requirements. This audit is all about combating fraud.

They pointed to the fact that it would not hit the UK until the Q4 Christmas pre-pay market and that it would command a premium price of over 300. They also claimed that their own devices would easily supersede it for functionality by the end of the year despite the clamour that greeted Apple chief Steve Jobs address at Macworld Expo last week.
Jobs claimed the device would change everything and included a widescreen iPod with touch controls a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough Internet communications device in one package. It runs Mac OSX Safari and iTunes.
But many were not impressed. Nokia director of communications Mark Squires said: We are practically a year away from its UK launch and with products like the N95 coming out in the next few months it is not leading edge.
One manufacturer source said: It won t be available on pre-pay which is what the Q4 Christmas market is all about. You have to see it in the same category as the XDA and the MDA which aren t very popular as phones. It s the same with this. It s too big to be a straight mobile.
Another industry source agreed: Its problem is that it is launching here at Christmas which is all about pre-pay handsets. It will have a minimal impact this year. Apple is talking about shipping 10 million but those will go to the US. The second generation of iPhones will be more of a threat but they won t appear until halfway through 2008.
Questions were raised about its marketing strategy too.
Apple will impose stringent guidelines on its distribution partners. Motorola s Dolce & Gabanna (D&G) handset bombed because D&G put tough conditions on networks and retailers. It is the same kind of thing said a source.
But networks with an eye on data revenues welcomed the launch.
A 3 spokesman said: It s good to see Apple moving towards our vision for the market of one device that supports customers communications and entertainment needs it s a step in the right direction. We think this shows the market is converging on one device this is Apple understanding it needs to be in mobile.

Accountant Hacker Young was appointed as administrative receiver of Euro Cellular on November 1. Euro Cellular first went into administration in 2003.
Hacker Young is now chasing Customs for the refund most of which will go to the company s main backer a Mr D Goddard who is owed 3537672.
Euro Cellular started trading in 2003 but ran into problems a year later when a customer failed to pay for a shipment of handsets from mainland Europe that was subsequently stolen.
At the beginning of last year Euro Cellular attempted to sell corporate airtime contracts. But this failed when Customs failed to hand over the 4.2 million VAT refund. The company had no cashflow to promote itself in the contract market or to pay for the handsets it had ordered as part of the contract package.
Customs then applied an extended verification ruling as a ploy to withhold the VAT refund even though Euro Cellular was not involved in missing trader fraud and was constantly in contact with VAT inspectors.
The failure of the company is attributable to the non-repayment of the VAT by Customs said joint administrative receiver Andrew Andronikou.

Individual mobile phone traders have deposits that range from 10000 up to 10 million with the First Curacao International Bank (FCIB). But the money was frozen when the bank was placed into administration by the Central Bank in October.
The Central Bank informed traders before Christmas that it was going to repay 75 per cent of their funds by the end of the year providing they made a wire transfer for the full amount.
It then stated that the remaining 25 per cent would be paid when the winding down process had been completed.
So far however nothing has been repaid.
The Central Bank stated before Christmas: [We have] almost fully analysed the FCIB account holders database and solutions have been found for the majority of the problems encountered. Therefore the Bank now deems it highly probable that payments will be initiated before the end of the year .
It added: It is very obvious that payments cannot be made to account holders being subject to a criminal or civil embargo injunction .
Alias Dass partner at Birmingham-based Dass Solicitors said: No money has been paid to traders yet. If it doesn t pay in the next few weeks then we have a legal action against it.
But Dass added that major issues blocking repayments to traders had been cleared up.
Previously the Central Bank has placed all these conditions upon traders and made excuses that the Dutch authorities could bring a damages claim and that therefore it could not pay traders their funds he said.
It also said that it had to categorise all its accounts as telecoms and non telecoms . That is not happening now he said.
Courts in the Netherlands Antilles ruled on December 20 that the Central Bank should not impose conditions on the release of funds and that it should start to make payments.

This would change the way VAT is applied on cross-border transactions and help eliminate carousel fraud but the French are worried the tax change would move the VAT scamming problem to other EU nations.
The French decision has taken Chancellor Gordon Brown by surprise. Last month Brown said France had agreed to reverse charging after apparently receiving assurances from French finance minister Thierry Breton.
A Treasury spokesman told Accountancy Age magazine the French had raised technical issues that were not on the table when Brown told Parliament the French had agreed to the plan.
But one trader who has been following events closely said:
Brown announced to a parliamentary select committee he had secured the backing of the French finance minister. The French Government knew nothing of this. Today Brown has had to come clean and admit he doesn t have its backing.
All 27 EU member states must agree to reverse charging before the tax change can take effect.