The Lions game is being released across all top tier mobile phone networks to coincide with the Lions seven-week tour of New Zealand ending in a three test series with the All Blacks.

He was formerly on the management board of O2 with responsibility for operations in Germany Ireland the Isle of Man and The Netherlands.

He has also served in senior management roles at FirstMark Communications Vodafone Airtouch International and Marakon Associates as well as an independent director at a number of telecoms and technology companies.

Nokia head of marketing Simon Lloyd said:

Nokia had flown in and met [club owner] Roman Abramovich. It was a done deal as far as we were concerned. It was a big surprise to me when we were with [Chelsea chief executive] Peter Kenyon on April 20 to sign the deal and he told us that Chelsea had decided to go with Samsung instead.

It dropped on us like a bomb. We were close to a deal. We had been in talks with Chelsea since before Christmas. We were in negotiations until the week before the Samsung deal was announced.

Lloyd maintained that the deal collapsed because Chelsea misled Nokia on its international rights to Chelsea content. Nokia believed that the deal covered global content rights only to find at the point of signing that four markets – Macau Taiwan Hong Kong and Singapore – were excluded from the deal.

Nokia wanted to be able to provide operators such as China Mobile content to sell on Nokia phones according to Lloyd. But Chelsea already had a deal in place with TWI a provider of media management and delivery solutions which covered those markets. Lloyd claims Chelsea offered to renegotiate the TWI deal before pulling out.

It was a stumbling block for us he said. It was a totally different deal but we were still prepared to negotiate around it. We were still committed but Chelsea went quiet on us. Kenyon told us one thing. Chelsea promised something it couldnt deliver.

We are a bit bemused by the Chelsea turn-around. It was an opportunity that would have been nice if it had come off. There was a lot of potential for us in markets like China and Russia. But there are bigger and better opportunities out there. It isnt something were going to dwell on.

According to Lloyd Nokia is reappraising its brand.

Music is a big focus for us as is the youth market in general which football fits into. There will be more from us. Were just not going to sponsor Chelsea.

He said of the Samsung deal: Chelsea is going with a simpler more straightforward shirt deal.

The Chelsea-Samsung contract announced on April 25 is worth a reported 50 million over five years and eclipses the 9 million per season contract Vodafone has with Manchester United to become the largest in British football.

Samsung UK director and lifelong Chelsea fan Mark Mitchinson refused to comment on the size of the deal nor Nokias interest.

He said: There were other companies including other telecoms companies interested in Chelsea. But Samsung is a truly global brand. Asia North America and the Far East are very important markets to Chelsea and were already in those markets.

The partnership is more important for us than the amount of money we paid to get it and Chelsea isnt short of money anyway. The synergies between both companies work.

Samsung will leverage Chelseas existing relationship with Orange which revolves around content.

We havent yet discussed our relationship with Chelsea but it makes sense to take advantage of the Orange-Chelsea-Samsung triangle said Mitchinson.

We have got a five-year deal so we will look to establish a very strong relationship get access to the fans to Jose Mourinho and to the players in order to run incentives and sell more Samsung phones.

Mitchinson said that Samsung had been in talks with Chelsea FC for seven months. The deal was done on the back of a record quarter in which Samsung Mobile exceeded its targets by 50 per cent.

We will practically hit our annual target in the first half of this year he added. March was a record month in terms of sales. Mobile represents now between 65 and 70 per cent of the total business of Samsung Electronics UK.

Alex Keogh left 20:20 at the end of March. Last week he started his new role at the Cambridge-based distributor.

20:20 is a fantastic career platform but its a bit like steering a huge oil tanker – there is only so much personal direction you can give it he explained.

Its focus is on shifting handsets in bulk so building further bonds and developing new strategies is difficult. You can grow the base to a certain extent but thats all.

Any different direction wasnt possible because all it wants to do is bulk sell mobile phones. Ive always thought theres a niche market for UK distribution and thats where Live Telecoms approach comes in. Theres an element of service that you can draw upon.

Live Telecom is backed by Shelford Trading which Keogh claims allows it to stay competitive.

2005 is a big year for us he added. Weve had a couple of years getting to learn the UK market and now we have a fantastic team in place to be able to win big contracts and serve the accounts.

Live Telecom managing director Deniz Ali said:

I have known Alex since he was my account manager at 20:20. I was doing a few thousand units and spending a million pounds a month and I was always impressed with the way he dealt with things.

When he left 20:20 and an opportunity came to have him on my team I jumped at the chance. We are going through massive growth and he is the ideal person to help us drive the business forward and win new clients.

Intek paid 3000 for equipment it had ordered when the pair were still trading last year. The Caudwell Group had originally demanded 10000.

Intek stopped trading with the Caudwell Group in July last year after Intek managing director Manny Hussain discovered that Caudwell Group recruitment agency Cornerstone Resourcing was leveraging Inteks dealings with other Caudwell Group companies to recruit Intek staff.

Intek staff had gone through training sessions with the Caudwell Groups 4U Ltd prior to approaches by Cornerstone to three of Inteks sales team.

After Hussain had failed to receive written assurances from 4U Ltd that it would not be party to Cornerstones recruitment strategy he severed ties with all Caudwell Group companies.

Because we severed relations there were financial matters outstanding with regards to equipment said Hussain. The Caudwell Group claimed we owed it 10000 but it never apologised for their actions and so we were never going to do business with it again. We stopped trading because of the groups actions.

We can now do what we want safe in the knowledge that it cant access our information and use it against us.

At the time of going to press there had been no comment from the Caudwell Group.

Meanwhile Hussain told Mobile News that Intek has completely overhauled its staff recruitment and training processes.

Nine months ago we hired a new human resources and training manager Kristen Birt and she has completely changed the way we hire and train staff he said.

Birt added: Previously we were pretty standard – wed advertise and applicants would have to attend two interviews before being hired. Wed give them a basic induction and then throw them into a trading shop to learn on their feet. We still advertise in the same way but rather than holding individual interviews applicants are seen in an informal group assessment.

Suitable candidates spend a day on the job in one of Inteks retail stores where both sides can see if they are suitable for the role.

The first batch of nine new recruits completed their inductions this week.

The South West-focused dealership has also opened new stores in Cheltenham Newton Abbot and Trowbridge taking its total to 24.

More explicit images will be available only to customers who prove they are over 18. The images will also be available online to non-Virgin Mobile customers.

Virgin BITES marketing manager John Conlon said:

Adult content is the unsung accelerator of every new communication technology from Polaroid to cable television and the Internet and we expect this service to be popular among our audience.

Priority is being given to safety security and protection with our robust age verification service.

Images will cost 2 each to buy plus the network download rate.

See page 14 and White Lines

He is Mark Watts – the former director of Unique Distributions Unique Games subsidiary.

Watts will set up the Activefone mobile content brand for the groups Airphone Distribution company.

He joins the Airphone Distribution board as operations director. His appointment follows the arrival at Airphone of ex-Unique head of business development Rob Whellams (Mobile News April 8).

Activefone will target network operators application service providers and large portals building an original technology platform that it claims will completely revolutionise mobile content.

Its an incredibly exciting development said Watts. We are in the process of building a variety of entirely new types of application and we already have commitments from a number of celebrities who will be central to the new concept.

We are specifically going outside the existing content arena which focuses heavily on the youth market and will be promoting to a slightly older audience. While it has plenty of disposable income it is one that has remained largely untapped.

Airphone managing director John Forde added: Mark has a knowledge of the content market that is second to none. This together with his expertise and dynamism gives us exactly the qualities needed to drive Activefones development.

Watts has been involved in mobile content for more than 10 years. Prior to his period with Uniques games operation he had been sales director of mobile games company Mforma worked for content specialist 7.24 Solutions and was part of the Orange retail management team.

The manufacturer embarked on a new strategy last February to make its phones more appealing to consumers after criticism that handsets were too business-focused.

General manager Graham Carter admitted that the change slowed up production resulting in a loss of market share as rivals such as Samsung edged closer to market-leader Nokia.

Our market share is quite low at around one per cent said Carter.

During the past year it was as high as four per cent and we had been hoping to see it go up to five or six per cent by the end of last year but certain factors have made it drop. One of the key reasons was that we had a delay in introducing the X700. In addition the change in product strategy towards visual styling meant that we were delayed in introducing the new range.

Carter described this as a lull but said that Panasonic was now just releasing the first of its new products and would hopefully be moving forward.

Every time you change strategy you are going to lose time as you regroup and work out where you are going he added. Unfortunately thats what we suffered from over the past year.

Carter believes the new products will regain the companys lost market share. The X400 which is our thinnest clamshell yet has just become available for 100 on Vodafone pre-pay he said. The X400 is very affordable and an extremely thin camera phone featuring all the latest technology including Java for savvy consumers.

In September Panasonic will launch its flagship handset for 2005 the VS7 the manufacturers first two megapixel camera phone.

These handsets are doing very well in all of the focus groups that we know of and everyone we have shown likes their look and feel he said. We have got a lot of hopes in these products.

The mobile network is offering a free pilot service until June as it installs more base stations along the route between London Victoria and Brighton rail stations. The service is available on six daily services from launch. At present 38 WiFi base stations have been installed with that figure set to rise to 60 by June.

Upload speeds currently hover at around 256K and download speeds at 2Mbit. T-Mobile said it would upgrade its connection speeds in time for launch.

From June charging will be introduced in line with T-Mobiles national HotSpot prices.

T-Mobile manager for WiFi Jay Saw said: We are the only operator that has placed GPRS 3G and WiFi at the centre of its strategy. That differentiates us from the competition. Were the worlds largest network – by our own definition.

Over the 10 days from April 1 T-Mobile logged 75 users the vast majority of whom were morning commuters. All of them had been alerted to the service by stickers in the carriage windows.

The Brighton Express has four million regular commuters. Were the first to install broadband on a train said Saw.

It is better than we can claim for our phone coverage or any network can for that matter because coverage (in the Brighton area) is patchy. People are already beginning to notice that were offering WiFi on trains and thats just by putting stickers in the carriage windows.

He added: Southern along with our own research and feedback tells us that theres a lot of demand. And the feedback from the early users so far has been very positive. We are trying to maximise the value of dead time for commuters.

The service is part of a 1 billion improvement project for Southern Rail which also includes refurbishment of the carriages and improved safety and security measures. The service will be rolled out on 14 trains mainly on the Brighton to London Victoria route.

Southern managing director Charles Horton said: Customers have so far enjoyed the experience and we have hardly advertised it yet. As people use Southern more with the improvements that are being made more and more people will use the service.

Details of the revenue share were not available.

Nomad Digital executive chairman Nigel Wallbridge whose company is responsible for the build and operation of the WiFi network said:

We are hoping to see this rolled out on railways across the world.

It uses a world-leading technology from Canada. In my business life I have rarely had a better experience than working with T-Mobile and Southern and the railways rarely get good press in Britain.

Saw added: We are at the testing phase as to what capacity is preferable. We are in discussion with other train operators. It is a developing stage. If others come into the field we will look at it.

It was unclear whether train staff would sell HotSpot passes.

The Brighton Express is the latest addition to T-Mobiles list of HotSpots in the UK which now number over 700.

The mobile division and home/ office applications division (CPE) have been set up as standalone businesses with more autonomy.

The restructuring programme is probably the best it could do said Henning Dransfelt research director at London-based analyst Ovum.

A sale now looks unlikely but a joint-venture with another manufacturer remains a distinct possibility according to analysts.

Siemens vice-president for northern Europe Jonathan Bate said: The main benefit will be the speed of decision-making. As a standalone business it will have its own management team which is wholly responsible for it and lives and dies by its decisions.

It gives the division a far greater degree of autonomy. The Siemens Group is a huge organisation and the decision-making for mobile has taken too long up to now.

The mobile business is so much different from other sectors in which the organisation operates. Our time to market was far too slow and inefficient.

We have made fantastic inroads in cost reduction already. We have made local cuts in the UK and reduced unnecessary expenditure and some headcount. Its now more efficient and will bear fruit in the second half of the year.

Siemens Mobile will develop a broader portfolio this year with more emphasis on high-end devices like the SK65 and the recently launched SF65 said Bate. It has already announced 15 new handsets for 2005 including two 3G devices.

Bate added: There has been so much speculation but were here to stay. We have taken the decision to fix it. We have done the cost-cutting and were now going to launch new more sexy products.

We need to be lean and mean and win back customers. This is the next stage of Siemens Mobiles recovery.

As part of its Energise MD programme Siemens wants to cut e400 million ( 272 million) in costs from mobile this year and at the same time increase productivity by e560 million.

It makes the mobile division more attractive by bundling it with CPE which is profitable and well-established in Germany and the UK. CPE is responsible for Siemens popular DECT phones which will help it retain brand equity commented Dransfelt.

He added: It keeps alive the possibility that Siemens will partner with another manufacturer.

It is in discussions with Nortel Networks and Acer and I would guess others too. Siemens said that it wants to keep the majority in any joint-venture but also that it would make concessions to be the minor partner if necessary. It needs to bring a strong partner and it knows that.

However results published last week showed that its mobile division had faltered for a third consecutive quarter.

Siemens shipped just 9.3 million handsets in the three months to March down 25 per cent on the same period a year ago. It has dropped to sixth place among mobile vendors.