Payne (18) joined the Mobile Phone Companys Loughton branch in August 2000 but left soon after to set up his own shop.

During his final weeks at the shop he sold two phones that turned out to be obtained fraudulently by the customer.

Kempster said he would deduct the sum from Paynes commission along with a further 100.

After a row about the two phone sales relations between Payne and Kempster broke down.

On one occasion Mr Payne was ill and not allowed to go home. Only after he had been physically sick was he allowed time off. He was also subjected to verbal assault from Mr Kempster said Tribunal chair Jean Laidler.

Payne told the Tribunal he was offered no commission but a reasonable pay-off if he went without a fuss.

I told my dad and he said I should go back and ask for 1000. I did and Mr Kempster went mad. I was quite frightened. There was a lot of verbal abuse. He commented about my family punched me in the arm and asked me to leave the premises. He also tried to push me down the stairs.

Kempster denied either physically or verbally assaulting his former employee.

He told the Tribunal:

Mr Payne is making wild allegations. It is totally outrageous. I have owned shops for many years and never have I been accused of anything like this. He [Payne] received commission payments but it was at the discretion of the company. We actually paid him more on one occasion than we had to. Russell was a kid. We had to give him some leeway which we did on numerous occasions. We could have thrown the book at him many times.

But the Tribunal ruled that although payments were discretionary employees were owed them if they had been paid in the past.

Manchester-based Celltalk went into administration in February with debts of 3.2 million.

Creditors will be asked to agree to a voluntary arrangement at a meeting to be held on March 27. This would require Celltalk to pay 10000 a month up to 100000 a year for at least two years towards meeting its debts. It has been given a payment holiday in January and September because of slow trading in those months.

In addition the company will pay half its profits each year over and above the 100000 annual payments.

Stanley says this could see creditors get back up to 70p in the pound. Of the 3.2 million debt 2 million is due to the directors and holding company. Outside creditors are owed around 1 million.

Stanley says there is a good chance for Celltalk to make healthy profits as he has slashed the companys monthly overheads by more than half.

Celltalk was started as a telesales operation connecting mainly to Orange in March 1999 by Richard Marsden and Jess Meredith-Watts.

The company was once Oranges largest independent dealer and generated more than eight per cent of its contract business.

But its reliance on Orange caused it problems when it couldnt get enough up-to-date handsets.

Although Celltalk is allowed to continue as a going concern the company is effectively being run by Begbies Traynor.

The directors will not be able to spend more than 5000 without the approval of the supervisor and will have to produce regular management reports.

The faulty chargers bear the model number TA3061-UK. Units starting with the serial number 0105 and higher are being recalled. Trium will send customers a free replacement charger with a pre-paid envelope to return the faulty one

Trium UK head of operations Richard Ward says there have been no serious injuries reported so far and that a small percentage of units are affected.

We issued a recall after there were a handful of instances where chargers were reported as falling apart. There is a relatively low risk of someone getting a shock but we have to treat it very seriously.

Ward says the problem arose after its Philippines charger manufacturer used a different type of screw to hold the unit together

Our supplier recently changed its screw supplier. The new screws crack the plastic lugs so the top part of the case can come apart. We are not sure exactly how many units are involved but we have identified the affected batch. We are recalling good units either side of the affected batch to be sure there is no safety risk said Ward

Ward says that Trium will be seeking compensation from its Far-East supplier.

We will be taking the hit financially at first and then discuss it with our supplier.

There was no hesitation in issuing a recall. We do not know how long it will take to recall most or all of the faulty chargers because this has never happened to us before.

I hope that we can quickly mop-up the situation Ward told Mobile News

Trium is also contacting any owners of Mars and Eclipse handsets who registered their handsets on Triums website.

Sendo Britains first mobile phone manufacturer debuted on Virgin Mobile with its S200. In July last year Virgin Mobile launched Sendos popular gaming mobile the S230. The small handset proved to be a success among the youth market with user-friendly features as well as four interactive two-player games.

In the S230 Sendo combined design ease of use and value for money said Virgin Mobile product marketing manager Jim Powell.

It has all of the features that our customers are looking for.

Sendo commercial director Thomas Leliveld said:

Virgin Mobile was the first mobile phone operator to work with us and selling more than 100000 phones since then is an excellent achievement.

The announcement is good news for Sendo which is currently locked in a legal dispute with US software giant Microsoft (Mobile News January 13).

Sendo is suing Microsoft claiming it used its partnership with Sendo to steal trade secrets.

According to Sendo Microsoft then passed these secrets to Taiwanese manufacturer HTC.

Sendo and Microsoft had been in partnership to manufacture the first Windows-based smartphone.

HTC which also makes the O2 xda combined PDA and phone later produced the Windows-based SPV Smartphone for Orange.

His figures are based on industry research which shows that 11 million Bluetooth chipsets have already been shipped.

One of the strongest drivers of growth will be impending legislation relating to the use of mobile phones within cars.

Handheld use in cars is already prohibited in Germany Netherlands Australia and New York. As a result the automotive sector is moving at an amazing speed to integrate Bluetooth into the dashboard he added.

Hunn also predicts that by 2006 Bluetooth chip manufacturers will sell as many products in one week as Wireless LAN specialists ship in a year.

The Link did this first in London. Were the first to do it on a national basis said Carphone Warehouse chairman Charles Dunstone.

All were trying to do is make people aware and that there are people in the phone business taking the mobile phone crime problem it seriously.

This compares with 28.8 million sent last February. Around 57 million were sent on Valentines Day alone.

For the entire month a staggering 1.2 billion text messages were sent person-to-person across the UK.

Year-on-year growth suggests that more than 60 million messages a per day will be sent by the end of the year.

Last year text messaging in the UK reached an annual total of 12.2 billion.

Philips marketing director Max Hore becomes UK & Ireland country manager reporting to Philips Paris headquarters.

Philips is relocating its Europe Middle East and Africa sales and marketing organisation to Paris. McPherson did not want to relocate and no similar senior role could be found for him in the UK.

Hore said: Philips has removed an unnecessary management layer. The roles of head of marketing for Northern Europe previously held by myself and vice-president for Northern Europe held by George became redundant.

He added: George and I had to consider other alternatives. I was offered the job of executive sales development manager for the UK and Ireland. I am the country manager with responsibility for sales and marketing.

Hore stressed that the move did not represent a reduction in commitment to the UK market.

People in the UK will only have to worry about the UK now. Previously the UK office was responsible for all of Northern Europe. The UK management has direct access to Philips in France.

He added: The new products to be launched at CeBIT will stimulate interest from operators. We are still selling the Fisio 825 into Dixons on Virgin. But we have been short of certain technologies. Our products were nice and very good but not exceptional. Rival products have a wow factor. You will start to see an integration of our mobile phones with other consumer electronics.

Called My X-5 the new model displays eight lines with 256 colours.

The X-5 includes EMS which allows animations and images to be attached to text messages.

It is compliant with the latest M-Services specifications and features GPRS.

The NEC 515 uses the fold form design. NEC sees it as a high-end product with metallic casing and a weight of 100 grams. It has a 2.2-inch screen which can display 65000 colours. Designed to enhance icon-driven software the screen can accommodate up to 14 lines of text.

GPRS-compatible the handset has a tri-browser that can manage cHTML WML and xHTML Basic. Users will be able to download content from a special section of the NECmobile.com website.

The NEC 515 supports both EMS and multimedia messaging service (MMS) enabling users not only to send text messages ringtones and logos but also to integrate text melodies pictures sounds and animations.

NEC also showcased its high-end DB7000 which comes with a 256-colour graphic display that can accommodate up to 15 lines of text. The DB7000 comes with GPRS WAP and 16-channel harmony ringer.

Four one-touch buttons allow instant access to WAP SMS voicemail and memo. A link to the NEC website allows ringtones animations phone books etc to be created and downloaded onto the phone.

Polyphonic ringtones can be assigned to individuals or groups of people enabling instant identification. One of seven LED colours can also be assigned to signal the callers identity.