The Beneficial Group whose brands include Phones On Finance and Phones on Credit was founded last year by mobile phone industry veteran Sally Hill.
The company which employs more than 75 people in Leeds and Gurgaon India offers finance plans to consumers with limited credit ratings who cannot obtain conventional network contracts.
Hill spent two years developing the business model after eight years in the industry. No other mobile retailer targets this niche market of sub/near prime consumer groups she said.
Their purchasing power is dependent on their weekly or monthly budget as opposed to full payment at time of purchase.
Customers get a loan to pay for the phone which can be repaid weekly or monthly.
The company will have an advertising budget of at least 1 million per year. The initial campaign will use national press ads.
with inserts door-to-door leaflets and other media later in the year.

The network says that UK businesses could save 14 million a year compared to existing mobile tariffs. It maintains that 22 per cent of mobile calls are made in the office and pay-as-you-go users stand to make the biggest savings.
The service was slated to launch last autumn. A spokesman said that a soft-launched trial of BT Fusion for Business did take place in September last year but that handset availability was limited at that time.
Businesses ordering the service before the end of March can get it at 6.25 a month per handset for the first three months over 24 months with 50 inclusive anytime minutes.
Handsets available are the Motorola v650 or RAZR V3B. Three handsets can run on the service in the office concurrently with additional handsets defaulting to the BT Mobile network.
At the moment the service is only available directly over the BT website through BT call centres or via the BT franchised Local Business Network of resellers.

The case was against Inpro which buys up intellectual property rights and was seeking a revenue share of RIM s UK business.
Inpro had filed its patent in 1996. It covered a computer system which reduced the processing power used by portable computers and other devices in accessing servers on the Internet.
RIM applied to the English High Court to revoke the patent on the grounds that it was invalid for lack of novelty and obviousness according to law firm Bird & Bird.
Inpro counter-claimed for infringement but the judge backed RIM. Inpro could still appeal.

Your Comms parent United Utilities will gain a 21 per cent shareholding in Thus as a result.
The move is part of a strategy to move beyond fixed-line said Thus chairman Phil Rogerson.
It coincides with a decline in demand for traditional telecoms services and an increase in demand for more innovative next-generation services.
United Utilities put Your Comms up for sale in December after the division reported a half-yearly operating loss of 11.8 million and a drop in turnover of 11.5 per cent to 98.2 million.

Reasons given for changing phones include the need for more up-to-date features (28 per cent) better tariff deals (19 per cent) new brand (eight per cent) smaller and lighter phone (nine per cent).

The figures come from responses from 1000 adults and 347 children who were quizzed by MORI.

The report also says 22 per cent of users own a mobile phone for more than a year and 10 per cent own one for more than five years.

At least 21 per cent of people questioned said they were still unhappy with the quality of calls they receive. Of the people questioned who are non-users 25 per cent said they were put off by the perceived high cost.

Symbian said it wanted to enter lower cost higher volume market segments.
Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford said: Symbian is focused on driving down the costs to our customers. My initial discussions with our customers and partners are very positive.
The cuts bring the cost down from $7.25 ( 4.17) per unit for the first two million handsets sold to as little as $2.50 per unit. The new pricing comes into operation from July.

The Symbian members hope to displace Microsofts Windows CE as the world standard operating system for Smart Phones and Communicators.

Motorola understands the value of partnerships to help enable the growth of industry through standards said Merle Gilmore president of Motorola Communications Enterprise.

This will be of interest to manufacturers of GSM phones who found themselves enmeshed in legal wrangles over use of Motorolas GSM patents.

The press advert which carries the tag-line The Internet wherever you are depicts someone holding a mobile and searching for the latest fashion while a fashion show is depicted in the background. Orange complained that T-Mobile only has geographical coverage of only 86 per cent of the country.
The ASA upheld the complaint on the grounds that the phrase was misleading even though T-Mobile pointed out that the ad featured a subject to coverage disclaimer.

According to reports from some of the leading distributors including MoCo Cell Link and Fone Logistics the network s most popular tariffs are being taken up in unprecedented numbers.
T-Mobile s Relax 200 was MoCo s third most successful tariff of the month while U-Fix off-peak 750 and 100 scored third and fourth respectively with Fone Logistics.
However 3 fought back with a new deal on the LG Muse UA80 which added 50 to the commission. It also scored highly with the two distributors dealers over its Video Talk and Text tariffs.
3 s VTT 700 was the top tariff in January for Fone Logistics and the fourth most popular with MoCo s customers.
A MoCo Cell Link spokesman observed that this was because it is the only VTT tariff that offers half-price line rental for six months.
3 s VTT tariff also scored as the third-highest seller with Anglia Telecom although a spokesman said that most of its dealers had scored better with business tariffs than consumer in January.
Orange was also strong scoring as the top tariff for MoCo with its Value Promise on the O2 400 tariff and coming second for Fone Logistics with its any network anytime 200 offering.
T-Mobile wouldn t have come in third six months ago noted MoCo head of communication and operations Harvey Alexander. It would have been fifth or not on the scale at all. It s got there because of a consistent price book competitive commissions and good stock allocation.

Grouptrade has been servicing the dealer market for years he said. I m looking at its overall strategy and hopefully filling some of the partnerships that may be missing with networks and manufacturers.
My role is to assist in growing its position by the introduction of strong partners new products and possible acquisitions.
He admitted the loss of Euro Cellular had hit him quite hard .
I took some time off and about a year ago started doing some consulting and waited for the right position. I ve known TAP for a long time and kept in touch.
However Donaldson said he had learned a lot from the demise of the company.
One of the big factors with Euro Cellular was content. We had things in place four years ago that in the past year have become commonplace. The industry is ready for a number of new products and content-driven services.