The company which was founded by ex-European Telecom man Win Donaldson went into administration last month and has moved to Putney south London. Previously it operated out of Sutton where it shared an office with its former distribution arm M-Fusion.

M-Fusion went bust earlier this year with debts of 800000. In January this year the companys Mad Box Media content creation business also went into liquidation with debts of around 1 million.

According to a source at the company the move came about because the old Sutton office was impractically large following the redundancies.

There had been rumours that Euro Cellular had gone bust since there was no answer to its new telephone number for several days.

However the company said that there had simply been moving difficulties with the telephone network.

The store opened last Friday (July 25) and it is the first centre that will showcase Sony Music Sony Vision Sony PlayStation and Sony Ericsson under one roof.

The new store also has a dedicated business area. Central to the stores aim will be showing customers how the different technology devices can interact with oneanother.

Sony Ericsson marketing director UK Peter Marsden said: This is the first time we are seeing all of the Sony products under one roof. The idea is to start to pull together everything that Sony is about.

He went on: Showing people how different devices connect will be a major aim as will offering demonstrations. The idea is that people can see how their mobile phones can can talk to a laptop or a notebook.

Marsden said that the Sony Ericsson part of the store will have a similar feel to a Vodafone experience store where customers will be able to see downloads and applications available across the Sony Ericsson range.

He added that Sony was in discussions about rolling the idea out to its 110 Sony Centre stores across the UK.

If the concept is successful a decision will then be taken about rolling it out to the 300 Sony affiliate stores across the country.

But Sagem admits the SARS virus caused a sales slowdown in China. Sagem forecasts total sales of 13 million mobile phones and GSM modules for 2003. In fixed-line telephony Sagem sold 450000 fax machines and doubled DECT digital cordless handset sales to 400000 compared with the first half of 2002.

Sendo originally brought the action against Orange in June this year because it believed the design of the circuit board in the Orange SPV smartphone infringed a patent that had been granted to Sendo.

Orange had developed its SPV smartphone in partnership with Microsoft and Taiwanese developer HTC which also produces the xda for O2.

Microsoft had previously been involved with Sendo to produce the Z100 smartphone.

But the partnership ended acrimoniously last year with Sendo accusing Bill Gates software company of stealing ideas and then using them to create the SPV.

Sendo is currently taking legal action against Microsoft in the US.

Mobile News understands the court costs in the Orange affair are not substantial and are in the tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands of pounds.

A Sendo spokeswoman said the legal action had to be taken against

Orange to defend Sendos intellectual property rights.

Now that the rights have been sold to Texas Instruments however there is apparently no longer any legal issue between Sendo and Orange.

Sendo took the action against

Orange because it is the sole distributor of the SPV in the UK she said. If we didnt take action then we would not be able to legally challenge any other handset that used our patent.

We said at the time that we regretted taking the action. Orange is a customer of ours and we look forward to working with it in future.

A spokesman for Orange said:

Orange has always denied any impropriety regarding the intellectual property rights of the SPV.

The offer was sent out as a bill insert to existing customers a direct mailshot to other customers and an insert into Oranges magazine O-Mag.

The new customer gets a 50 voucher for money off a new handset or 50 credit to their account.

A similar scheme exists for pre-pay customers with existing customers receiving 15 credit and the new customer receiving free text saver or group saver deals if he spends over 99 on a handset.

The move follows Orange sales director Stuart Henrys announcement to Mobile News that the only way the network is able to match 3 is by working directly with the customer.

The original ET under Warren Hardy had been Oranges biggest distributor before it went into administration last year.

But the MobiShop-backed company that bought ET failed to secure the contract when it took over.

The move now allows ETs in-house sales team to connect to Orange but does not extend to the distribution of kit or connections.

ET managing director John Drinkwater believes the move is a step in the right direction for the company.

Drinkwater said:

This is not earth-shattering news. It is a small step but a step in the right direction. It is a positive move in terms of having good commercial relations with Orange. I dont know if it will lead to a distribution licence but it is a stepping stone in terms of building relations.

When we first secured the take-over of European Telecom Orange told us it wasnt going to give us the distribution agreement because we didnt have a trading history.

It is now more than a year since we took control and this agreement is a significant step in terms of helping people see what our aims are. This is a solid company that has shown stable ongoing growth with sensible business plans.

The Orange agreement follows the award of an O2 distributionlicence to European Telecom in January this year. European Telecom is also a T-Mobile distributor.

The Association said that GSM Europe is currently working on a draft set of recommendations on spamming within mobile networks which covers several of the issues raised by the Commission.

The issue has global ramifications and therefore global solutions are needed to combat the problem commented an Association spokesperson.

Developers manufacturers and corporate customers from companies such as Sun Microsoft Compaq Handspring Palm Symbian Toshiba Information Systems Siemens and Sony Ericsson converged for the one-day event at the Madjeski football stadium for a morning of presentations by Orange and partners followed by a product fair.

Orange also announced it had secured agreements with Nokia and Handspring to give developers access to the companies documents and toolkits via the Orange Developers Forum website.

Forum developer manager Anna Grundy commented:

This is a major step forward for the developer community. Application developers have traditionally had to approach manufacturers and operators individually to secure the necessary information and toolkits. Now the sharing of information and close cooperation allows developers to access information.

The Orange Developers Forum develops and tests new mobile voice and data applications within Orange.

Members get early access to new technology and special access to a library of industry documents and the opportunity to apply to trial new equipment.

They can also attend workshops on specific technologies or products and are given the opportunity to present papers.

The figure is a rise of 10 million on the 45 million sent in May and takes the cumulative total for 2003 to 10 billion.

MDA chairman Mike Short put the rise down to interactive texting with programmes such as Big Brother and Pop Idol as well as the continuing popularity of person-to-person text messaging.

In all BT Openzone customers will soon have access to 1710 WiFi access points around the world including the 700 sites that are now available in the UK.

BT has an existing deal with TeliaSonera Europes leading WiFi operator. BT Openzone subscribers can use more than 660 TeliaSonera HomeRun points in Scandinavia France Belgium the US Thailand and London.

In May BT Retail chief executive officer Pierre Danon announced that the nets target to reach 4000 BT Openzone sites by summer 2005 had been brought forward to summer next year with sites located in places such as Hilton Hotels Roadchef service stations and BAA airport terminals.

Roadchef will install sites in all of its 29 locations by the end of the year.

BT also announced that a UK provider of specialist training and conference venues the Initial Style conference centre group will install BT Openzone sites in 10 of its 28 centres nationwide.

More than 100 major companies have signed up for BT Openzone. These include the BBC Carlton Communications Toshiba Scottish Enterprise Royal and SunAlliance John Lewis Microsoft and GE Capital.

BT managing director for products and enterprises Steve Andrews said: It was a logical step for BT to supplement this UK network with the first roaming deal to give WiFi access right across the US.