Staff Reporter

The network is slashing the price to send images to 20p launching a new online imaging site and exclusively offering the two megapixel Sony Ericsson D750i. The price cut will run throughout the summer and applies to messages sent both here and abroad.

T-Mobile has also teamed up with Kodak to launch the T-Mobile Kodak Mobile service where customers can store edit share and print their photographs.

First time users of the T-Mobile Kodak Mobile service will receive unlimited storage 10 free prints and two free wallpapers. T-Mobile customers can simply send an MMS to 777 to upload their pictures and get started on the service.

And in a triple whammy the network is exclusively offering the Sony Ericsson D750i two megapixel camera phone in its shops from June 1st.

They claim the handset is the lightest 2-mega pixel camera phone to hit the market and offers the largest memory thanks to its 38MB internal memory and the 64MB Memory Stick Pro.

The D750i comes equipped with technical features common in stand-alone digital cameras such as auto focus 4x digital zoom preflash with red-eye reduction intuitive digital still camera user interface and accessories such as a camera flash plus an MP3 player and FM radio.

The usage of mobiles for imaging is really building up said Deborah Porton picture messaging proposition manager for T-Mobile.

Most phones that people buy are cameraphones – what we are doing here is a case of putting all the elements together to make imaging easy for our customers.

Phil Chapman Director of Marketing T-Mobile UK added:

T-Mobile is unleashing the full capabilities of the picture-message experience by making the service in-expensive improving the quality of pictures by launching our first 2- mega pixel phone and by providing our customers with the ability to store edit share and print their photographs.

ROK will bundle airtime and Emblaze handsets together with pre-loaded MMC cards containing music video games and animations.

The MVNO will be branded under the name of a partner as yet unconfirmed and initially sold online with roll-out to high street retailers scheduled for 2006.

ROK marketing director Bruce Renny said:

The Emblaze handsets will carry the MVNO brand name. We will also bundle ROK mobile content on to MMC cards to be sold with the handsets.

The phone becomes not just a music player but a portable DVD player. We will be very competitive in terms of pricing. It will start as an online proposition with online top-ups and roll out more widely next year. It is about fun performance and affordability.

Renny reckons that up to 14 hours of music and video content can be stored on a 1GB MMC card.

ROK is aiming for an estimated 250000 customer base within 12 months and a million within three years.

Emblaze Mobile CEO Laurence Alexander said: We are excited to be working with such a forward-thinking and energetic company as ROK. We work with our customers to develop devices that will actually make people want to use the phone for more than just calls and SMS.

Emblaze last week announced a six-fold increase in revenues in 2004 compared with 2003 and extimated that it would double revenues in 2005 to $120 million ( 63.4 million) largely on the back of the consumer launch of its mobile proposition.

An Emblaze Mobile spokesperson said: We will be producing more and selling more into operators. A consumer launch will happen in July. It will be a big push for us.

Emblaze has expanded its international position with headquarters in London incorporating marketing sales and management.

The design and manufacturing house in Korea provides volume manufacturing while Israel handles software R&D and application and content development.

The youth went on a robbery spree attacking passengers on trains throughout Surrey. Jack Girvan (18) of Ashtead is charged with conspiring with others to rob people between February 11 and April 7 at Tattenham Corner Leatherhead and elsewhere.

He is also charged with robbing passenger Anthony Acton of a Nokia phone on February 12 and passenger George Hareley of a Nokia 6820.

On April 5 he stole a Nokia 6600 from passenger Jamie Finch and took a Sagem mobile from passenger Samuel Bell on April 6. l In another case a jobless Romanian man has been charged with dishonestly handing a stolen Samsung mobile. Valer Varga (36) of Canning Crescent in Wood Green north London allegedly stole the phone from Katie Fleming at Wood Green market last November 28.

He was remanded on unconditional bail until June 2.

Granada will supply around 60 video clips to 3 across the eight-week series. Clips will be charged at 50p each or included within add-on packages.

The deal will also offer customers access to backstage outakes from the programme.

Stars of the Saturday-night show include former tennis player Annabel Croft pin-up Leilani Dowding ex- Miss Sweden Victoria Silvstedt and Big Brother winner Kate Lawler.

Virgin Mobile Pay Monthly is available exclusively through The Carphone Warehouse until the end of July. Customers can either reduce their monthly charge or renew and upgrade their handset when their 12- or 18-month contract expires.

Investment bankers Morgan Stanley said Virgin Mobiles pricing for the initial contract period looked high. The new Mobile 100 tariff at 24 is expensive compared to 3s Videotalk 500 tariff which offers 500 minutes for 25.

At 24p per minute it is at the higher end of other operators entry-level tariffs too which range from 14p to 25p.

Mid-range tariffs follow a similar pattern said Morgan Stanley. The advantage is in the price reduction that becomes available when the contract expires.

The standard tariffs start looking attractive if the subscriber opts for the discount after 12 months it said.

Telecoms analyst Ovum also thought the tariffs were high:

Virgin has an innovative twist on standard contract tariffs but they are perhaps too complex. The airtime bundles of 60 100 and 200 minutes are more expensive than other operators tariffs. The tariff is reduced after the 12- or 18-month contract period but this will put some consumers off when comparing tariffs in the shop.

Ovum predicted that the move would improve Virgins ARPU:

Virgins annual ARPU has been decreasing said Ovum. These contract tariffs should help stabilise and grow ARPU.

Matt Chambers of The Phone Chamber in Edenbridge said:

Virgin could do a lot of business with this offer. It has good coverage because its using the T-Mobile network.

Its a good deal and if it comes to the independent channel we would be able to sell it hand over fist. It would be nice if it did upgrades through the shops. If it plays the long game on this it will do very well.

Virgin Mobile sales and marketing director Graeme Hutchinson said: Our value for money has always been about a better-rounded proposition – something consumers can trust and rely on.

The mobile division and home/ office applications division (CPE) have been set up as standalone businesses with more autonomy.

The restructuring programme is probably the best it could do said Henning Dransfelt research director at London-based analyst Ovum.

A sale now looks unlikely but a joint-venture with another manufacturer remains a distinct possibility according to analysts.

Siemens vice-president for northern Europe Jonathan Bate said: The main benefit will be the speed of decision-making. As a standalone business it will have its own management team which is wholly responsible for it and lives and dies by its decisions.

It gives the division a far greater degree of autonomy. The Siemens Group is a huge organisation and the decision-making for mobile has taken too long up to now.

The mobile business is so much different from other sectors in which the organisation operates. Our time to market was far too slow and inefficient.

We have made fantastic inroads in cost reduction already. We have made local cuts in the UK and reduced unnecessary expenditure and some headcount. Its now more efficient and will bear fruit in the second half of the year.

Siemens Mobile will develop a broader portfolio this year with more emphasis on high-end devices like the SK65 and the recently launched SF65 said Bate. It has already announced 15 new handsets for 2005 including two 3G devices.

Bate added: There has been so much speculation but were here to stay. We have taken the decision to fix it. We have done the cost-cutting and were now going to launch new more sexy products.

We need to be lean and mean and win back customers. This is the next stage of Siemens Mobiles recovery.

As part of its Energise MD programme Siemens wants to cut e400 million ( 272 million) in costs from mobile this year and at the same time increase productivity by e560 million.

It makes the mobile division more attractive by bundling it with CPE which is profitable and well-established in Germany and the UK. CPE is responsible for Siemens popular DECT phones which will help it retain brand equity commented Dransfelt.

He added: It keeps alive the possibility that Siemens will partner with another manufacturer.

It is in discussions with Nortel Networks and Acer and I would guess others too. Siemens said that it wants to keep the majority in any joint-venture but also that it would make concessions to be the minor partner if necessary. It needs to bring a strong partner and it knows that.

However results published last week showed that its mobile division had faltered for a third consecutive quarter.

Siemens shipped just 9.3 million handsets in the three months to March down 25 per cent on the same period a year ago. It has dropped to sixth place among mobile vendors.

The mobile network is offering a free pilot service until June as it installs more base stations along the route between London Victoria and Brighton rail stations. The service is available on six daily services from launch. At present 38 WiFi base stations have been installed with that figure set to rise to 60 by June.

Upload speeds currently hover at around 256K and download speeds at 2Mbit. T-Mobile said it would upgrade its connection speeds in time for launch.

From June charging will be introduced in line with T-Mobiles national HotSpot prices.

T-Mobile manager for WiFi Jay Saw said: We are the only operator that has placed GPRS 3G and WiFi at the centre of its strategy. That differentiates us from the competition. Were the worlds largest network – by our own definition.

Over the 10 days from April 1 T-Mobile logged 75 users the vast majority of whom were morning commuters. All of them had been alerted to the service by stickers in the carriage windows.

The Brighton Express has four million regular commuters. Were the first to install broadband on a train said Saw.

It is better than we can claim for our phone coverage or any network can for that matter because coverage (in the Brighton area) is patchy. People are already beginning to notice that were offering WiFi on trains and thats just by putting stickers in the carriage windows.

He added: Southern along with our own research and feedback tells us that theres a lot of demand. And the feedback from the early users so far has been very positive. We are trying to maximise the value of dead time for commuters.

The service is part of a 1 billion improvement project for Southern Rail which also includes refurbishment of the carriages and improved safety and security measures. The service will be rolled out on 14 trains mainly on the Brighton to London Victoria route.

Southern managing director Charles Horton said: Customers have so far enjoyed the experience and we have hardly advertised it yet. As people use Southern more with the improvements that are being made more and more people will use the service.

Details of the revenue share were not available.

Nomad Digital executive chairman Nigel Wallbridge whose company is responsible for the build and operation of the WiFi network said:

We are hoping to see this rolled out on railways across the world.

It uses a world-leading technology from Canada. In my business life I have rarely had a better experience than working with T-Mobile and Southern and the railways rarely get good press in Britain.

Saw added: We are at the testing phase as to what capacity is preferable. We are in discussion with other train operators. It is a developing stage. If others come into the field we will look at it.

It was unclear whether train staff would sell HotSpot passes.

The Brighton Express is the latest addition to T-Mobiles list of HotSpots in the UK which now number over 700.

The manufacturer embarked on a new strategy last February to make its phones more appealing to consumers after criticism that handsets were too business-focused.

General manager Graham Carter admitted that the change slowed up production resulting in a loss of market share as rivals such as Samsung edged closer to market-leader Nokia.

Our market share is quite low at around one per cent said Carter.

During the past year it was as high as four per cent and we had been hoping to see it go up to five or six per cent by the end of last year but certain factors have made it drop. One of the key reasons was that we had a delay in introducing the X700. In addition the change in product strategy towards visual styling meant that we were delayed in introducing the new range.

Carter described this as a lull but said that Panasonic was now just releasing the first of its new products and would hopefully be moving forward.

Every time you change strategy you are going to lose time as you regroup and work out where you are going he added. Unfortunately thats what we suffered from over the past year.

Carter believes the new products will regain the companys lost market share. The X400 which is our thinnest clamshell yet has just become available for 100 on Vodafone pre-pay he said. The X400 is very affordable and an extremely thin camera phone featuring all the latest technology including Java for savvy consumers.

In September Panasonic will launch its flagship handset for 2005 the VS7 the manufacturers first two megapixel camera phone.

These handsets are doing very well in all of the focus groups that we know of and everyone we have shown likes their look and feel he said. We have got a lot of hopes in these products.

He is Mark Watts – the former director of Unique Distributions Unique Games subsidiary.

Watts will set up the Activefone mobile content brand for the groups Airphone Distribution company.

He joins the Airphone Distribution board as operations director. His appointment follows the arrival at Airphone of ex-Unique head of business development Rob Whellams (Mobile News April 8).

Activefone will target network operators application service providers and large portals building an original technology platform that it claims will completely revolutionise mobile content.

Its an incredibly exciting development said Watts. We are in the process of building a variety of entirely new types of application and we already have commitments from a number of celebrities who will be central to the new concept.

We are specifically going outside the existing content arena which focuses heavily on the youth market and will be promoting to a slightly older audience. While it has plenty of disposable income it is one that has remained largely untapped.

Airphone managing director John Forde added: Mark has a knowledge of the content market that is second to none. This together with his expertise and dynamism gives us exactly the qualities needed to drive Activefones development.

Watts has been involved in mobile content for more than 10 years. Prior to his period with Uniques games operation he had been sales director of mobile games company Mforma worked for content specialist 7.24 Solutions and was part of the Orange retail management team.

More explicit images will be available only to customers who prove they are over 18. The images will also be available online to non-Virgin Mobile customers.

Virgin BITES marketing manager John Conlon said:

Adult content is the unsung accelerator of every new communication technology from Polaroid to cable television and the Internet and we expect this service to be popular among our audience.

Priority is being given to safety security and protection with our robust age verification service.

Images will cost 2 each to buy plus the network download rate.

See page 14 and White Lines