His replacement is Paul Smith who joined the company from the software industry in November as dealer sales general manager.

Another new appointment at 4U is Bill Colley who becomes mamanaging director of 4U Ltd and Phones 4U Ltd. the store-owning part of the business.

Colley was previously in charge of 4Us Dutch subsidiary.

One employee Minesh Patel (19) was caught on hidden camera stealing a phone that led to him being sentenced to do 60 hours of community service.

The prosecutor said Patel had been working at Peter Joness store in Sloane Street unaware that a hidden camera had been placed in the stock-room.

The camera recorded his movements as he walked around the room and opened a box containing a 269 Ericsson handset. He put this in his jacket. Upon leaving the store he was stopped by a shop detective who found the stolen phone.

At a police interview he said he wanted to give the phone to his sister as a present.

Patels other excuse was that he had heard other employees talking about stealing stock and decided on the spur of the moment to try it himself.

It was an act of crass stupidity by this young man said his solicitor.

Sagem has programmed the RC 715 phones with a dedicated touch key that connects to the credit line showing the amount of available credit left.

A quarter of the 100000 phones are to be delivered before Christmas.

Sagem shares rose FF2 when news of the order came out. The company says it will be making five million mobile phones next year compared with three million in 1998.

The film which stars Gene Hackman and Will Smith and is directed by top British director Tony Scott (Top Gun /Crimson Tide etc) shows the main characters communicating with each other using Philips phones and pagers.

Nokia did a similar deal with the makers of The Saint and Ericsson supplied a futuristic phone for the most recent Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies.

But unlike The Saint and Tomorrow Never Dies where the phones were non-working props all the Philips devices seen in Enemy of the State were apparently fully functional with the actors having live conversations on them on camera.

In the UK Philips is supporting Enemy of the State with a 250000 advertising and marketing campaign promoting the Genie Sport the latest version of the Philips Genie.

All new employees will now be required to attend an intensive induction programme at the new skills facility situated near the first Phones 4U shop in Stoke.

We are going through an itensive recruitment programme to cope with rapid growth. The new centre allows us to generate trained advisors at the rate of 16 a week. Its been a challenge to attract the right people into the business said finance director Tom Philips.

The company has hired field marketing company EMS to build its presence in the market. EMS will provide a branded Panasonic team to handle all field marketing activity such as product distribution product placement training in-store demonstrations and new product launches.

EMSs people will visit up to 900 independent dealers and multiple outlets including The Link The Car Phone Warehouse Dixons etc.

Panasonic recognises the need to take a leading role in educating customers and retailers abut what our phones can do said Panasonic retail development manager John Hutchings.

Said EMS chairman Richard Thompson:

Advertising can go part of the way in educating retailers and consumers about what a phone can do. But at the end of the day field marketing allows us to show people face-to-face how different Panasonic phones work and answer any enquiries they may have.

The PocketPhone Shop has 100 stores and plans to increase the store portfolio by a further 50 stores within the first three months of this year according to managing director Simon Jordan.

Id like to thank everyone who has bought a phone from The PocketPhone Shop. We couldnt have done it without you said Jordan.

Ollila also told 300 telecoms analysts in London that Nokia expects profitability to be above industry average.

We have become one of the established players an industry leader by most measures. What this means is that the key strategic objective we identified in 1992 to focus on the fastest-growing sectors in telecommunications are no longer enough. Our intent is to achieve industry leadership in the most attractive global communications segments.

Ollila said Nokia has now made 100 million phones in total. The milestone phone a Nokia 9110 Communicator will be put on display at Nokias HQ in Espoo Finland.

Nokia said its global production of phones surpassed a million a week for several weeks in the Autumn.

The companys largest manufacturing site is at Fort Worth in the USA.

Proceedings are to be taken in the High Court in Dublin challenging the decision of the Irish telecoms regulator Ms. Etain Doyle who awarded the GSM 1800 licence to Meteor a consortium of US firms Western Wireless and Walter Group and the Irish RF Communications company.

A spokesman for Orange claimed the Meteor decision will disadvantage Irish consumers. Orange has maintained it would provide a state-of-the-art service to Irish customers which would offer better value for money service and coverage than Meteor.

That has been our position from the initial application for the licence and it is still our position.

It was thought that Oranges promise to unify Irish and British tariffs would have been a winning factor in it gaining the licence as it would have meant big savings for customers who would normally face a roaming charge when making or receiving calls to or from Ireland while in the UK.

The court action by Orange is unlikely to be heard until early next year.

But Orange has already won a small victory as its legal challenge has already delayed the issuing of the licence to Meteor and held up the unveiling of the newcomers GSM 1800 network.

A Meteor spokesperson said the conflict was a matter to be settled between Orange and the Regulator adding we have every confidence in the Regulators decision.