Tim King founder and managing director of 2sms.com is so confident his new SMS product called Team Data will become thestandard way of collecting informal information within an organisation he reckons he could sell his company for 1000 times its earnings giving it a value of 100 million.

Weve already had a number of approaches this year said King.

I have told each of them that I want 1000 times earnings. I have said: Come and see me in a years time and I could sell at a tenth of your present bid or I could sell at 10 times. Im an entrepreneur and Im going to take that risk. Thats what I do.

2sms.coms main service is called 2sms. It allows business customers to send SMS messages from their office to staff mobile phones via a web-based account. Customers can track messages and management can monitor traffic and data.

The company last week launched a second product Team Data designed to cut down on inter-office paperwork. Instead of sending out bulk e-mails to staff questions are posed to staff on the Team Data website. Respondents are notified of the questionnaire and its deadline by text message

2sms.com became profitable for the first time last year It has 1500 clients in aerospace finance government healthcare IT retail telecoms and transport. The 2sms service is distributed by BT Openworld and by O2 as O2 businesstxt and is resold by various IT services companies.

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Virgin Mobile launched BITES last week. It offers users the chance to fill spare moments with its Bite-sized boredom busters such as a picture game called How Bizarre! in which customers guess the original gender of transsexuals.

Virgin Mobile says its BITES portal which replaces its Virgin Mobile Extras service is a gossip magazine-style entertainment service and is better focused on consumer demands than any of its competitors portals.

The site is aimed at 15- to 17-year-olds said to be vulnerable to the theft of mobile phones. MICAF executive secretary Jack Wraith said: The industry works very closely with the Government and police. This project is another important and positive step in raising awareness among young people enabling them to avoid becoming victims of crime.

Customers who sign to Orange on a two-year contract available from July 1 get 10 per cent off their line rental.

Orange is offering dealers connection bonuses between 31 and 93 depending on the tarrif. Your Plan 60 has the lowest bonus while Your Plan 400 has the highest. The bonuses come on top of Oranges regular commission package which currently pays dealers between 76 and 338 for signing customers to a 12-month tariff.

Orange told us about it but were not interested said Mark Whitaker of Findaphone in Accrington.

If a customer signed up to that they would regret it in a year he predicted. Were not going to push it because it would mean losing a customer for a whole year.

He went on: Things change so quickly in this industry both in terms of handsets and tariffs. 3 will be offering something better in a years time no matter what Orange comes up with now. It wouldnt make a difference if Orange offered 50 per cent off line rental for two years it still doesnt benefit the customer.

The two-year contract stipulates that customers cannot upgrade in the first year. In the second year they can upgrade if they sign up to a new two-year contract but will be charged for the new handset.

Ellis Dunning of Talksense in Borehamwood said:

Its not going to take off. People get bored quickly with handsets. They want to upgrade twice a year. Its not going to work if upgrades arent made easy.

Orange could do better than a 10 per cent reduction in line rental. If Orange increased it to 20 per cent the second year and offered free upgrades then it could work.

But there are no benefits to the customer in signing up to it. Theres still a lot of competition with 3 and that wont let up in a years time.

Bob Sweetlove business manager at Hugh Symons said:

It makes sense for a network to lock in customers instead of risk them switching networks after 12 months. But whether it makesfinancial sense for the dealer remains to be seen.

The dealer has to evaluate whether he will make more off the commissions offered for the two-year contract and keeping his Orange customers tied or sign them up again after 12 months and take the bigger commission but risk losing some of them.

Oranges tariff guide for July says customers can migrate between two-year tariffs but cant migrate to a one-year contract without paying off the remainder of their two-year contract.

A report MobileYouth 2004 by market research company MobileYouth says 20 per cent of primary school children already own a mobile phone equivalent to 700000 mobile phone owners aged between five and nine.

The company interviewed a sample of 1053 children.

MobileYouth predicts that in two years more than a million primary school children will own a mobile.

Fifty-nine per cent of school kids said they would have fewer friends without a mobile phone.

Children with phones were less likely to do regular exerise but were more likely to maintain regular contact with their friends.

Children between five and nine spent 32 per cent of their pocket money on their mobile phones.

Mobile uptake is being driven by playground pressure and parents risk not only socially excluding them now but preventing them from developing key communication skills for later life Wyndham Lewis an analyst at MobileYouth said.

Mobile Republic sells SIM cards and promises customers cash back to repay the line rental using the network commission it receives.

The petition was originally due to be heard on June 23 and was reheard last week. At the time of going to press the outcome was not known.

Consumers on web forums are now sharing stories about problems with Mobile Republic saying they are being tied to contracts.

Leicester businessman Andreas Komninos said he bought a Vodafone and a T-Mobile SIM card from Mobile Republic.

The T-Mobile contract was for 13.99 a month and the Vodafone contract was for 29.99. He was to pay the line rental but Mobile Republic would credit his account every month. However he didnt receive the promised cash back.

They said the arrangement would take a while to set up. But no money at all had been credited he said. Komninos was unable to contact Mobile Republic.

People are being tied to expensive contracts that they would never have taken out had Mobile Republic not promised to pay for the line rental he said.

Komninos has been able to cancel both contracts but says he is out of pocket because he paid for four months line rental for SIM cards that he never used.

But Mobile Republic managing director Andrew Amankwah said his company is being unfairly criticised.

A Safer Place To Buy says we owe it over 100000 but it is just 3500 he said. We tried to explain that there was something wrong with their invoices. It didnt want to know. We tried to contest the winding up petition but our legal advice was to let it go through.

Amankwa says customer dissatisfaction was unavoidable because of the court action.

Before the court action we launched a cashback offer and signed 200 customers. Then A Safer Place To Buy lodged its petition. Our assets were frozen. We had money and there was cash owed to us from distributors but we havent been able to access our funds. So we have not been able to keep up our cashback promise. All the accounts have been frozen.

Amankwa also denied rumours he was running another company SMTL Marketing. I did some web consultancy for them. People were saying Id set up a new company.

Amankwah says he will now quit the mobile industry.

The mobile industry is one-sided. In no other industry would you make sales for T-Mobile that they have up to six months to claw back. It is virtually impossible to run a business because the networks have you over a barrel.

From August 1 users just have to respond to a message with the word Stop to terminate unwanted message services.

Mobile Data Association Chairman Mike Short said: This scheme could stimulate demand for premium services as there is a clearly defined method to stop the services/payments when the customer wants.

I have another job but I cant say where yet. I have very much enjoyed my time at LG but an opportunity has arisen that I cannot pass up.

Last year was the initial start to the business so we dont want to overstretch ourselves.

3G is the future but we cant ignore the fact that 2.5G still has huge appeal.

3G is still inits infancy- there is still a long way to go in terms of uptake and market appeal.

There is interest in 3G but there are still a lot of people who are not ready for it yet.

The C1200 has a burgundy finish features GPRS JAVA and WAP 2.0. It has 200-hour battery stand-by and five hours of talk time.

The C1100 clamshell phone is a featherweight 80.5g. It has MMS WAP 2.0 and JAVA.

Volunteer visitors must complete endurance challenges using the dust splash and shock-proof Siemens M65.

The M65 Climate Chamber is part of a pan-European tour which will visit 20 European cities over the next six months.

At the end of the tour in November the fastest challengers from across Europe will win the opportunity to join the Siemens Mobile Experience Tour in Peru where they will be able to explore the stunning scenery and extraordinary diversity of climates by mountain bike raft and jeep.

The M65 is available now on O2 and free on contract.

Mobile phone users looked at a daily average of 47 million WAP pages. This was more than double the daily average of 22.5 million WAP pages viewed during the same period last year.

The MDA forecasts that WAP page impressions will reach a total of 13 billion for 2004.