Staff Reporter

The London distributor in conjunction with French manufacturer Sagem took eight top-performing dealers on a jaunt across Malaysia.

The party of 20 was made up of four European Telecom staff eight dealers and eight guests.

Weve done quite a few incentives in the past said European Telecom marketing manager Bruce Welland. But this is by far the biggest European Telecom has done.

The winners were chosen from European Telecoms dealer base for the number of Sagem handsets they sold. A points system was devised for sales of Sagem so that dealerships were awarded an entry in the Malaysia prize-draw for every 50 points they earned.

Its the first time weve run a promotion this way Welland said. It means the promotion was not just restricted to the biggest dealers in the country.

This time smaller dealers had a chance of winning because they can get two three or four entries to the prize draw.

The nine-day trip included four nights at the coastal resort of Shangri-La on the island of Penang and four nights in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. Five-star accommodation was provided throughout. Highlights included trips to the Petronas Towers the second tallest in the world and the Malaysian Grand Prix.

I was told they spent 6000 to 7000 per head and there were 20 of us in total said Shaf Shah of Switch Communications in Birmingham.

With some of the trips Ive been on there has been a lot of waiting around for taxis and buses. But this was well-organised and relaxed.

It was the best promotional trip Ive ever been on said Paul Davis of Aerial Telephones in Portsmouth.

Ive been on promotional trips with O2 and Vodafone but this was the best of the lot.

Im a Formula 1 fan anyway but this was incredible. We sat in an executive box overlooking the starting line the pits and the McClaren stand. When youre that close you realise how fast and noisy the cars are Davis enthused.

European Telecom signed 30 new dealers through the promotion and is already planning its next.

We are already discussing destinations for our next promotion and will soon shop the ideas around companies who will subsidise the cost and share the benefits said Welland.

Mobileshop.com has acquired the intellectual property rights of Fonetasticmobile.co.uk including its website software and brand name. Mobileshop.com will not take on any staff as part of the deal which was finalised last week.

We bought it because it was there said Mobileshop.com chairman Grenville Reeves. It was a competitor and its always good to buy out a competitor.

There were three others who bid for Fonetasticmobile.co.uk but the site decided that we were the best to do business with. We were able to move quickly and wrap negotiations up in a matter of days.

From start to finish including the integration of software it took three weeks. Thats all.

Mobileshop.com based near Doncaster has a staff of 75. That number will increase confirmed Reeves though he declined to disclose figures regarding either the takeover itself or increases in the workforce. The mobile dot.com will remain at its current premises.

Mobileshop.com and Fonetasticmobile.co.uk are a good business fit said finance director Gary Proctor. Theres no direct competition between the two business because they operate in distinct arenas.

The promotion replaces the half-price line rental that had been offered on the same 3 contract tariffs.

The offer of half-price line rental was very successful but we decided to try something new said 3 sales director Marc Allera.

We had record sales last month on the back of the offer on line rental and we think we can emulate that with the new text offer. But value is a right not an offer and this text bundle will bring new customers to 3.

The offer of unlimited texts is subject to a fair-use policy. The customer actually has an upper limit of 3000 text messages per month.

Mobile industry experts were not surprised by last weeks announcement that 106 Dixons stores will close.

The managing director of a leading rival retailer who declined to be named said:

The news wont be a surprise to anyone. Its been rumoured for some time that the whole estate is in trouble. But its disappointing to see someone of that stature closing stores.

Mobile Newss chief mystery shopper regularly found the stores to be under-performing on his visits. He said the closures were no loss to the mobile industry.

Dixons has never contributed anything meaningful to mobile phone retail he said.

The stores will not be sadly missed. The majority of the stores I have visited have fallen well below the minimum acceptable standards as far as their sales staff and approach to selling mobile phones is concerned.

He went on: On every occasion Ive found that its sales people are far more enthusiastic when it comes to selling plasma screens and Game Boys.

Dixons head of PR Hamish Thompson said the closures represented around two per cent of the groups trading space and the move had come about as part of a review on how best to develop the Dixons format for the future.

The reason for the closures is simply that the smaller stores are uneconomical to trade from he said.

Thompson added that Dixons is currently looking at reformatting its remaining stores to provide more specialist customer care.

We invest a lot of time and effort in making sure our staff are equipped and informed on all products which can be difficult given the huge range that we stock.

Its true to say Dixons staff dont have the same level of focus on mobile products as say The Link which is a specialist chain but that is down to the fact that they have to focus on a much wider range of products.

We are looking at the possibility of having larger format stores split into sections with specially trained staff on hand to give customers the best level of support.

Before Euro Cellular Karavadra worked in a marketing role at Elite Accessories.

Jones used to run Vodafones old service providers such as Peoples Phone and London Car Telephones.

An ex-Vodafone executive told Mobile News:

The appointments are typical of Vodafones policy of rotating senior executives around a number of prominent positions around the group. Joness move is part of a determined effort to get Japan on the same page of the script as the rest of the Vodafone group. He has gone Japan to sort things out.

The board feels things have not been progressing quickly enough. David is a mover and a shaker – he doesnt suffer fools gladly. Hes not radical; he believes in facts and figures. But Vodafone is confident that he will stir things up.

The site will boost our incremental revenue by providing customers with a great after-sales offering said Dunstone. I really like the browse-and-buy shopping experience on the phone – it should prove a big hit with customers.

The new content service which was developed by Ringtones.co.uk with billing facilities from Bango.net went live just before the Easter weekend.

Traditionally mobile users have had to read catalogues or print ads then text special codes and words to purchase the ringtone or picture they wanted said Bango.net CEO Ray Anderson.

The Carphone Warehouse has now made the process much simpler and user-friendly but it has cut out the complexity and gives people a wider choice of up-to-date content.

Users access the online mobile shop by texting go cartones to 87121 or going via a bookmark on their phone.

They can then browse a virtual catalogue of thousands of ringtones and pictures and review ringtone charts. A click-to-buy system then downloads them to their phone.

A Carphone Warehouse spokesperson said it was too early to tell how many people had visited the new mobile shop since launch but commented that early forecasts looked very promising.

It reckons customers can save up to 80 per cent on their international calls by using the special handset.

A three-minute call to the US will cost just 39p compared with 4.50 on one of the UK networks.

The Primus PTL888 is an 85g dual-band clamshell design handset which will retail for 119.99 SIM-free.

It has a 64000-colour screen WAP GPRS and polyphonic ringtones and comes in three colours.

Primus will initially be selling the handsets direct SIM-free. The company says the handset can be used with any UK SIM card.

The selling point of the handset is the Primus Hotkey button which links the user to the Primus international fixed-line network.

Access numbers for each country are stored in the phone which means the customer only has to enter their destination number.

To use the service the customer also has to register with Primus.

The customer is charged a local or standard rate by their network for the connection to the Primus network. Primus sends the customer a bill for the international leg of calls routed over its least-cost routing system.

Ashley Simon 25 of Playfield Crescent East Dulwich raided the shop with an accomplice on January 16. Simon who had pleaded guilty was also placed on probation for 18 months.

The prosecutor told the court that two men wearing balaclavas went into the Orange shop just after 5pm and each snatched one of two phones being shown to a customer.

They ran out chased by an Orange shop employee. A passing police officer caught Simon but not the other raider.

Simon told police he had not wanted to commit the offence but that the other man had put him up to it because he owed him money.

Simons defence lawyer claimed he was not wearing a balaclavaalthough he did have a woolly hat on that was a meant as a disguise.

The barrister said Simon had committed the offence to pay off a drugs debt.

He was sentenced after the defence told the court his drug use was cannabis only not Class A substances.

The dealers stand to win a trip by signing customers up to Orange contracts on Nokia phones.

Nokia was keen to make a noise in the market said Bob Sweetlove business manager at Hugh Symons Communications which is managing the dealer promotion. It wanted to be more visible in the dealer channel because the other handset manufacturers are making good progress.

Sweetlove says the stakes were raised last year with Data Selects Who Wants To Be A Millionaire promotion which increased Data Selects sales of Nokia products by 850 per cent.

Hit The Strip is similar to Avenirs current Orange promotion which rewards 14 top dealers with tickets to the European Cup final in Portugal.

Entrants to the Hugh Symons promotion are divided into three leagues according to their performance record with Orange contracts over the previous three months.

The leagues are determined by a points system with more points awarded for signing or upgrading customers to higher Orange tariffs and better quality Nokia handsets.

Of the 14 eventual winners eight come from the premier league of Orange dealers. Just one winnercomes from the lowest division made up of smaller Orange dealers with the rest from the mid-range of dealers.

The small dealers like it because they can enter and have the chance to win said Sweetlove. But it is weighted towards the bigger Orange dealers as they are the main source of connections.

Another Vegas trip will be awarded to the best new Hugh Symons dealer. Sweetlove said the best new dealer also is likely to come from the higher divisions.

The Hit The Strip promotion is one of a number of new Hugh Symons incentives for April.

The distributor is also offering a 60 bonus on Orange Talk Plan contracts and a free Java game worth 6.99 with every order of a Nokia handset.

Among forthcoming Hugh Symons dealer incentives this quarter 12 O2 dealers will have the chance to race performance cars at a Jonathon Palmer race day and T-Mobile dealers will be able to win Red Letter Day outdoor activities. Details have yet to be confirmed.