Staff Reporter

Downie joins from Asda where he was retail director on the executive board and director of logistics. Following an initial induction period this month Downie will take up his post at the end of the first quarter next year.

Downie is tasked with expanding Phones 4Us sales capacity by 30 per cent through increasing sales space in existing stores and opening 100 new stores.

Downie will report to Tim Whiting group MD for the Caudwell Group who took over from Peter Green when he left the company at the end of last year.

Whiting said: I have been running Phones 4U retail for 18 months and it was always my intention to appoint a managing director for the retail business once it was delivering against its potential.

The business has had a tremendous year and current trade is well ahead of our expectations and this is an excellent time for David to join.

A Phones 4U spokesman commented: We are actively seeking new stores for Phones 4U. We want to make sure all major high streets across the UK are covered.

He added: We have to make sure that we can deal with the demand. We will open them as soon as we have found the sites and kitted out the sites.

Speculation was fuelled by the appearance of senior T-Mobile man Tim Hoettge second to CEO Rene Obermann at T-Mobiles Hatfield offices last week.

One source said: Hoettges appearance at Hatfield was certainly seen as a tad unusual and definitely added to the concerns that McBride was making an exit from T-Mobile and that Hoettge was there to see him out.

McBride responded: There is no truth in this. All of the T-Mobile countries except the US report in to Tim so he is my boss. He used to run Germany as well so was doing two jobs and was not able to spend much time in UK. Now he has hired someone to run Germany it has freed him up and he will be in the UK most weeks. His presence is not a surprise to me or to anyone.

He has been chairman of T-Mobile UK for 18 months so has a close interest in and knowledge of the business.

Munro has been representing clients in the mobile phone industry for nearly 20 years specialising in VAT matters.

One of his first major cases was in 1991 when he was a senior partner at Birmingham law firm Williamson and Soden. He successfully represented a trader who was suing West Midlands police for wrongful arrest after an ESN-changing allegation.

It is an absolute coup to have David Munro presiding as chairman of our conference said Mobile News editor Ian White.

He is hugely respected in the industry and still remains one the very few barristers in the country with a close understanding of how the mobile phone industry operates.

Key speakers at the conference include leading VAT law specialists Hassan Khan Alias Dass Anthony Barnfather and Andrew Young. Ex-Customs enforcement officer-turned-consultant Don Mavin will also appear.

See page 49 for full details

The ASA adjudication dated September 21 found that specific Jamster television advertisements for Crazy Frog Sweetie the Chick and Nessie the Dragon ringtones appealed to children and therefore should be restricted to broadcast only after 9pm.

Jamster appealed to the independent reviewer of ASA adjudications and were seeking the injunction to prevent the ASA from publishing its adjudication pending the independent reviewers decision.

In its adjudication the ASA upheld 298 public complaints that it was unclear the ads were promoting a subscription service (rather than a one-off payment) and that the style of the ads were of particular appeal to children. The ASA ordered that a post-9pm restriction be applied to the ads in future. 

In his ruling the judge Mr Justice Lloyd-Jones accepted the ASAs arguments that the public interest was best served by publishing the adjudication now notwithstanding Jamsters request for an independent review. He awarded costs to the ASA.

Despite the court ruling however Jamster chief operating officer Markus Berger-de-Leon hit back slamming the ASAs adjudication as flawed because it relates to old Jamster advertisements that are no longer being broadcast.

Jamster intends to pursue all legal means to overturn the ASAs unjust and unfounded decision about its past advertisements said Berger-de-Leon. The ASA decision relates to old advertisements whose broadcast has been discontinued by Jamster.

Our current advertisements which are not cited by the ASA decision continue to represent Jamsters commitment to enhance customer awareness and understanding of Jamster products and services.

But the ASA stood by its finding. Director-general Christopher Graham said its decision was in response to concern about the influence of the ads on children.

Many of the people who complained to us are parents whose children have received large phone bills because they downloaded the ringtones without realising the financial commitment involved he said. 

This ruling sends a warning to the whole industry that ads for ringtones and other mobile phone subscription services must not appeal to under-16s. It also reminds the advertising business as a whole that the ASA carries out certain public law functions – and that it will be supported by the courts.

It comes with an integrated two-megapixel camera built-in FM radio and MP3 player and high-resolution QVGA colour display. Bluetooth an e-mail client MMS instant messaging and a fast XHTML web browser are also among its features.

The Siemens SG75 also 3G is a slider featuring an MP3 player a 1.3-megapixel camera a CIF camera for video calls and 70MB of memory which can be extended using an RS multimedia card. It also permits Bluetooth printing. The SG75 will be mid-price and available from November.

The third in the new 3G series is the clamshell SFG75 which also features a 1.3-megapixel digital camera and video function. A stereo headset and a USB data cable for synchronising data with a PC come supplied. It should be available from November.

At the launch of three Siemens Mobile devices in Turin last week (see below) Wang revealed that the purchase of Siemens Mobile would release the troubled handset vendor from the shackles of Siemens AG.

The handover which coincides with the end of Siemens financial year at the start of October will see Wang become chairman of the new Siemens-BenQ venture.

Though Siemens is a great company it cant run this mobile division Wang claimed. It plans for three years and then implements its plans over a period of five years before a product even launches. That is fine in other industries but it is no good in mobile.

According to Wang the deal untangles the mobile phone division from the rest of the organisation.

Siemens Mobile staff are like lions trapped in the city he said. I told them: Youre lions go back to the jungle. Because this industry is like a jungle. Now those staff at Siemens Mobile can take it to a higher level.

The new leaner Siemens-BenQ will solve latency issues that have contributed to the demise of Siemens Mobile. It will also mean that the buck stops with Clemens Joos who will get increased autonomy as CEO of the joint-venture from October.

Wang explained: Siemens was late to market with its mobile products. Everybody knows that. Now it can recover market share. Also there is a question of costs. Clemens Joos has headed up the mobile unit for a long time but responsibility for global costs has never been in his hands. Now all the important costs are down to him.

Observers expect that BenQ will look to run all its manufacturing operations from mainland China eventually casting a shadow over Siemens Mobiles 6000 global staff. However Wang dismissed this arguing that staff and expertise in Germany were chief factors in the purchase of Siemens Mobile.

Why would I want to lay staff off? Even Motorola has more staff. We dont want to sack employees because they are all good talents. If I just wanted the brand I could have spent $1 million every day on advertising so that every single magazine featured BenQ. Ultimately we bought Siemens because of the expertise available to us.

Another factor was the benefit of European distribution and operator contracts already established by Siemens Mobile.

Europe is very much an operator business and getting established with the networks takes a very very long time Wang admitted. You cant just present them with a product and a price.

In return BenQ brings to the table the high-end multimedia functionality that will lift the Siemens portfolio which has been characterised for a long time by budget devices.

Siemens is very good at engineering and in terms of quality and technology he said. However Siemens multimedia capabilities are not as good as those of BenQ. We have been producing cameras MP3 players and so forth in-house. So this sort of thing will eventually bring up the entire Siemens portfolio.

Christopher Lewis of Kincardine Gardens Maida Vale also admitted jumping bail after his arrest.

District Judge Mr Quentin Purdy presiding at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court on Thursday September 15 refused Lewis bail and ordered him to appear at the Crown Court for sentence on October 13 deeming his powers of a maximum six months in custody to be insufficient.

The show which is broadcast on Channel 4 and E4 follows the survivors of a plane crash stranded together on a remote hostile island.

The service begins this week. Fans will be able to keep up with plot lines with two- to three-minute recaps of every episode previews of the next episode and behind the scenes interviews. Each clip will cost 50p.

This was revealed by Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin at an analyst and investor day last week (see Business Watch page 12).

Sarin affirmed that 3G is gaining increasing traction in the market and revealed that Vodafone would launch an extensive range of 3G phones to widen the market.

There will be 15 handsets for Christmas on Vodafone live! 3G covering entry level to premium. Ten will be exclusive to Vodafone. The top end of the range will be led by the Sharp 903 Sharp 902 and Toshiba 903.

The Sharp 903 is the first 3.2 megapixel camera phone with a 2.4-inch screen. The Toshiba 803 is optimised for listening to music music and has a remote control and optimised user interface. The Toshiba 903 has network-assisted GPS location finding. The Sharp 902 is a limited edition model in Ferrari colours offering access to exclusive Ferrari content.

The launch enabled the music player handset to leapfrog previous favourites at the stores the Motorola V3 and Nokia 6230.

The company refused to give any indication of actual numbers sold or reveal the proportion of SIM-free handsets to contract phones sold over the first weekend of sale.

Dozens of customers queued to be the first to buy the handset. Because of the time difference between the UK and US consumers in London actually beat shoppers on the other side of the Atlantic to be the first worldwide to get hold of the device with Stephanie Radcliffe as the worlds first customer.

The ROKR is already the top-selling phone for subscription customers said Carphone Warehouse UK MD Andrew Harrison. But this launch is just the first step in a long journey that will fundamentally change our industry.

He added: The demand comes from people who want to listen to music on the move. Theres only so much pocket space.

Harrison said branding was key to take-up of multi-use handsets such as the ROKR and Sony Ericssons W800i Walkman-branded phone. Although handsets have had a music playing capability for more than 18 months he said consumers still had not embraced the concept.

Having well-recognised brands is quite important he said. We have to try to talk to people about how they actually get music on to their phones. With iTunes Apple is providing an easy solution for them as well as product branding. The challenge for other manufacturers is how they react to this.

The exclusive agreement to sell the ROKR ends on September 26 after which the market will be opened up to other retailers.

See Our Shout page 16