Staff Reporter

Other popular retailers will be joining the shopping service in the near future.

Retailers will provide an overview of available items illustrated withfull-colour pictures and accompanied by more detailed descriptions. Live! customers will also be able to view regularly updated special offers from each retailer.

An icon on the live! menu navigates users to a virtual shopping centre. Payment is by credit card and goods are despatched to the buyers registered delivery address.

Learn was launched two months ago with ads on store window displays TV radio and bus sides. The programme aims to help users get the most from their phones features and from mobile data.

As well as boosting store traffic the campaign urged 250000 customers to personalise their Your Page area on the Orange WAP portal.

Oranges campaign research also revealed the top 10 technical fears people have about their phones. Top of the list were questions on predictive text. The second most prevalent query was how to change ring tones.

The third biggest uncertainty for consumers was how to pick up their voice mail abroad Other questions included how to download ring tones set up speed-dial and perform group texts.

Learn also boosted the work of Orange call centres which have been dealing with more than 10000 calls a day. Traffic to the Orange website increased by 35 per cent while page impressions rose 67 per cent.

The number of users of Oranges Open Access service which offers 4 a month unlimited WAP access has tripled from 100000 to 300000. Sales of the Orange Open Access retail pack have more than tripled to 37000.

WAP usage rose 40 per cent with the number of WAP page impressions tripling and the number of WAP downloads quadrupling.

Orange eventually wants to achieve 25 per cent of its revenue from data by 2005. The Learn campaign has helped data revenues rise to 17 per cent of the total.

Advertisement and brand tracking consultany Millward Brown reckoned 47 per cent of the population remembered the Learn campaign when prompted.

Oranges brand recognition is twice as high as most brands with 76 per cent of those quizzed remembering that the Learn advertisements were by Orange.

Oranges Top 10 Learn requests were: How do I use predictive text or remove it? How do I change my ring tone? How do I pick up voice mail abroad? How many text messages can my phone hold? How do I download ring tones? Can you back up my numbers from my phone? How do I get e-mails on my phone? How do I transfer pictures on my phone to my PC? How do I set up speed dial? and How do I set up group text?

My job will be to increase our dealer database. I know what dealers are looking for and understand the pains of retail. We are looking to double the customer base.

He went on to say: The growth is going to come from high-value customers. We are not interested in volume. We want dealers to bring to us their high-spending customers. We are prepared to pay them greater commissions based on the true value of the customer.

Sandford was made redundant from Project Telecom in May along with 50 other employees. He had been given a regional sales director role after selling Ternhill to Project for 500000.

No matter what we do mobile phones will still feature in street crime he warned.

Cars have had better security systems fitted yet are still being stolen. It is everyones responsibility to make handsets less easy to steal and re-use. But theft is still going to take place.

That said we are behind the scheme and are currently engaged in trying to advance these issues. We have been very proactive of late. While I accept we havent got it right first time that hasnt stopped us from exploiting possibilities.

As part of the industrys drive to combat the apparent rising tide of mobile phone crime MICAF has been running an Immobilise advertising campaign to encourage people to report stolen and missing phones.

But while a phone can be switched off within minutes of it being reported stolen it can still be reprogrammed and reactivated using software available on the Internet.

The system is almost identical to the mapAmobile location service developed by mobile software company MI international and distributed exclusively by The Carphone Warehouse until September.

Both use base station information rather than GPS satellite data to identify the location of the tracked handset. Depending on the service they choose users register the phone number they want to track with either MST Locate or The Carphone Warehouse.

Each service costs the same with an annual subscription of 29.99. However this pays for 10 search requests on mapAmobile but 12 on MST Locate.

Owners of the mobile phone being tracked have to give their consent by responding to a warning text message before the service is activated.

MST Locate and mapAmobile provide the location information on a secure website which can be accessed by the registered user.

The site contains a map indicating the phones location. A location can also be requested by calling a 24-hour call centre.

No extra software is required. The services work with all handsets on T-Mobile Orange Vodafone and O2. 3 is not yet covered.

This is a fantastic opportunity for the mobile phone retailer to generate a totally new revenue stream with their existing business clients said MST International commercial director Stuart Thomas.

The agency quizzed 500 adults about what services they wanted from their mobile and how long it was likely to be before they upgraded to start to use these services.

The research indicated that the market for picture messaging could almost double between now and the end of the year. Seven per cent of people said they already had picture messaging capability. Another five per cent expected to adopt it in the next six months.

A similar proportion expected to get video messaging soon. This is three times the number currently claiming video messaging capability.

But fifty seven per cent of those surveyed claimed that there was nothing their mobile could offer them of interest other than the current voice and text applications.

Despite this lack of apparent demand however there was a definite recognition of eventual adoption. Nearly 24 per cent acknowledged that they would eventually get picture messaging.

Women seemed more cautious about adopting new services with 42 per cent of all women believing they would never have picture-taking capability in their mobiles against 35 per cent for men.

Both desire and expectation are stronger among younger audiences said David Fletcher head of research at Mediaedge:cia.

These are encouraging signs suggesting a strong performance for upgrades up to and probably peaking at Christmas time.

The relative circumspection of 25- to 34-year-olds suggests a price-sensitivity combined with an expectation of falling prices as the market develops.

Fletcher went on: The fact that more and more people expect to adopt new services rather than express spontaneous interest indicates that consumers now expect that emergent technologies will become interesting to them as their friends and colleagues start to take up and talk up the benefit.

Samsung has appointed a new head of product management a global national account manager for O2 and a content manager and website manager for its Fun Club interactive website.

General manager for mobile UK Mark Mitchinson said there would be a further four or five appointments within the next six weeks.

He also promised dealers that Samsung would soon have a wider handset range and promised six new handsets for the second half of the year.

Last year we made some advances he said but this year we need to step up to grow. We have some really outstanding products coming out in the second half of the year and we want to be in a position to give them the support they deserve.

We want to become a very clear second to Nokia and the only way we can do that is by having the right people in place. We have been under-staffed for some time now and we have to have the right people in place if we are to move forward.

Samsungs new head of product management is Ender Yavas its global national account manager for O2 is John French. Fun Club content manager is James Davis who joins from Vodafone. The website manager is Nick Turner Samuel.

Customers had been invited to sign up for a free text festival guide information service. But the service was never intended to be free and a mistake had been made with the advertising. Users were charged 20p a message. Orange said wrongly billed customers were informed and their accounts were credited with the debited amount. This applied to contract and pre-pay customers.

We made a mistake and rectified it. The problem was identified almost immediately and the people at Glastonbury were notified of the situation said an Orange spokesperson.

He replaces Katsumi Ihara who becomes deputy president group chief strategy officer and chief financial officer of Sony Corporation in Japan.

Flint has worked at Sony for more than 10 years and is said to have extensive experience in international management consumer electronics and the business-to-business environment.

Ihara has been president of Sony Ericsson since the joint-venture was formed in October 2001. He will continue as a Sony Ericsson board director.

Katsumi Ihara has performed a tremendous task in creating the joint-venture and steering it to its present position said Sony Ericsson chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. I am looking forward to welcoming Miles Flint to Sony Ericsson. He is bringing additional experience to secure the companys continued growth.

Sony Ericsson last month reported a strong increase in shipments and record profits for Q1.

3s most popular handset the NEC 606 has come to the end of its production run and no new handsets will be out until next month.

Dealers report customers are more attracted to 3 by its low-cost packages rather than equipment. Users seemly broadly happy to switch to the larger NEC 808.

However several dealers have revealed that they havent been able to get hold of 808 handsets.

Kevin Billington of KEB in Sussex deals directly with 3 and has been unable to order any new 808 phones.

I know there are some about but I think we must have missed the order for them he said.

Ian Robinson of MoCo Cell Link only has NEC 808s left in stock.

We have seen sales slow down because of the absence of the 606 he said. The 808 is a good phone but it isnt an obvious consumer phone – and the new 3 tariffs are excellent consumer offerings. But we are seeing 3 selling in spite of the 808 and if we had any 606s in stock we would be seeing sales rise.

Ian Gillespie managing director of 3 distributor Fone Logistics said:

The 808 is less popular than the 606 but we are still seeing an increase in demand for 3. And with 3s current football promotion under way the 808s large screen is a good selling point.

Hugh Symons business manager Bob Sweetlove agreed that sales of the 808 have increased since the end of the 606 because it is the only viable alternative. Sales of the 808 are going pretty well because more people are seeing it as a replacement for the 606 he said.