Samsung will double its UK spending over the next quarter as it launches in Ireland on Vodafone and O2 this month.

In an interview with Mobile News Samsung Mobile UK director Mark Mitchinson said:

Weve put as much money into Ireland over the next quarter as we have into the UK. Im looking for 10 per cent market share out of Ireland by the end of this year.

He added: There is a poor quality of service offered in Ireland. 3 will shake things up but its been a duopoly for a long time with Vodafone and O2. Its almost as if it has been left alone. No one has really wanted to go in.

I want our market share next year to be 25 per cent across the UK and Id like to get at least 20 per cent of the Irish market.

See interview page 18

Orange head of independent sales Chris Hough told Mobile News that since the network brought together its direct and indirect sales units under Mike Newnham six months ago the situation had improved.

There are always going to be direct salespeople there who get paid on what they sell said Hough. So if they can get a deal thats what theyll try and do. Its certainly not something we want to promote and we certainly dont want it to happen.

Under Mike Newnham it has become a lot easier for us to control the two channels. Previously we had people for both [indirect and direct] sides. We expect these incidents to occur less and less. Its not something we want to happen and we have numerous discussions internally about how to stop it.

Hough also defended Oranges recent dealer commission cuts.

Weve taken stick for reducing the commissions. But there are a number of reasons why we did that.

We over-achieved on contract for the first five months of the year. In the face of the aggression from 3 and the money it was throwing around that has been quite an achievement.

We have budgets for both acquisitions and retentions. Its a case of working to our budget and using that money in the best way possible to sign new customers or upgrade existing ones. We just over-achieved and therefore for the first half of the year we had to cut back the commissions.

He added that small business and pre-pay would be the focus for the network for the remainder of the year.

Full interview page 22

Vodafone confirmed last week that it would close its Brindleyplace call centre in Birmingham which accounts for 650 Vodafone staff in February. It also said that its Woodlands customer service centre in Newbury would probably shut in March putting 180 jobs in doubt.

Connect senior organiser Steve Thomas said: Vodafone could have been more open with staff at Brindleyplace. The site had been run down for some time but staff had never been informed of the long-term plans for the site. For a communications company it is surprising that it didnt communicate its intentions sooner.

Thomas conceded that Woodlands staff were given advance warning of the closure but questioned whether the notice period would help minimise the impact.

A Vodafone spokesman responded: It was a difficult decision and only arrived at recently. Staff were informed when we were in a position to inform them of the decision.

Vodafone said last week that 500 of the jobs at Brindleyplace will move to other sites 30 of the Woodlands jobs would remain at Newbury and 110 would go to other sites.

But it was the surprising presence of so many top T-Mobile bosses that attested to the carriers efforts to reassure its channel.

Managing director Brian McBride sales director Simon Ainslie head of consumer sales Mark Duncan head of channel marketing Claire Winstanley marketing director Phil Chapman and head of field sales Glyn Horsfield were all present.

Chen Kotecha of Leicestershire-based ScanCom.com said: It was very reassuring to see such a strong high-ranking management turnout.

Olamide Kayode Sunmola 23 of Tyrwhitt Road Brockley south-east London pleaded guilty to attempting to obtain an E1000 mobile phone from the store on December 19 by deception.

He was granted unconditional bail and is due to be sentenced on September 19.

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

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 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.

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.

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.