Commercial director Andrew Harrison is now UK chief executive and financial director Frank McHugh is now chief operating officer of the UK company.

Both report to Carphone Warehouse Group chairman and chief executive Charles Dunstone.

Harrison now oversees all UK trading including retail on-line purchasing logistics repairs and customer services.

McHugh joined the company as financial director from Tandy in January 1999 and will be responsible for UK finance IT warehousing distribution and human resources.

Commented Charles Dunstone:

These appointments strengthen our management team significantly to ensure these opportunities are embraced.

Johnson had been with The Carphone Warehouse since 1989.

He still retains his 10 per cent shareholding.

The margins in our industry are getting tighter but this is a particularly pleasing result given millions of investment in new premises new technology and developments overseas. We have made medium and long-term investment decisions whilst still producing acceptable profitability in the short term said chairman and chief executive John Caudwell.

Caudwell said 100 million worth of shares would be released to senior managers who stayed with the Group.

The market is getting tighter. The challenge now is to provide the best possible content and added value to a consumer market that continuously looks for the new and innovative.

Caudwell ruled out a stock market flotation in the immediate future.

We are able to finance virtually every new development from cash. But if an absolutely un-missable acquisition or growth opportunity comes along that will take more money than we have access to then I will consider flotation said Caudwell who owns 96.5 per cent of the company.

The policies will be backed by insurance underwriters Trenwick.

Fonecare for pre-pay costs 24.99 for a years cover including theft mechanical breakdown and loss.

Post-pay Fonecare costs 49.99 and covers theft damage mechanical breakdown and airtime abuse up to 500.

And Hunn says only 500 Bluetooth companies will survive by 2003 out of 2400 members of the Bluetooth special interest group which is responsible for setting standards and promoting interoperability across all communications.

To ensure success companies should guarantee their products are interoperable with other manufacturers technologies easy to use and sensible claims Hunn.

Bluetooth is about everyday solutions not science fiction. Bluetooth has been a real buzzword for the past couple of years. Its not surprising that so many companies want a piece of the action.

The problem is that most of these companies have a computing or telecoms background and very little expertise or experience in radio frequency technology or software he concludes.

Virgin Mobile enjoyed its most successful quarter ever adding 370618 customers in Q4. Virgin and O2s figures for the quarter were up on their Q3 connections.

T-Mobile Orange and Vodafones connections were all down compared to Q3 however as the total number of net new subscribers during Q4 remained just shy of 1.5 million. Oranges customer base swelled by 252000 customers taking its total to 13.3 million.

Vodafones total customer base increased by 267000 to 13.2 million. However Vodafones active customer base shrunk by one per cent to 96 per cent.

This means Vodafones active customer base stands at just 12166000 – a net increase of 116000 subscribers for the quarter.

All four networks plus Virgin Mobile added almost five million customers during 2002. The total number of active mobile subscribers has reached almost 50 million in the UK.

Vodafone had the best year for connections with 1.1 million new customers.

T-Mobile pipped its MVNO partner Virgin with more than a million new customers in 2002.

But Virgin will be happy that it beat both Orange and O2. Its 938000 new customers exceeded the 925000 picked up by Orange and O2s 877000.

O2 claimed text message usage increased by 21 per cent over the previous quarter with 1.5 billion messages sent. O2 also claimed it now has more than 200000 active GPRS subscribers and 100000 customers using Java games and multi-media messaging (MMS) services.

O2 said data revenue has grown to 17.4 per cent of total service revenue up from 15.3 per cent.

Vodafone also noted a rise in data revenue at 16 per cent for the quarter up from 13.8 per cent.

Orange reported a data revenue increase from 11.2 per cent in 2001 to 14.3 per cent in 2002.

Your Communications says it is currently in the process of terminating its dealings with Telecom South.

Telecom South operations director Doug Essex alleged:

Your Communications has had financial problems as a result of the Ilkeston Travel saga whereby thousands of SIMs were sold and not activated (see Mobile News May 29).

Essex said his company worked for some months to connect a number of handsets for its customers through Your Communications.

But all these applications failed Your Communications revised credit checks (see Mobile News August 6).

While this was happening Essex claims he had problems getting payments from Your Communications and stopped doing business with them.

Since we stopped dealing with them Your Communications has approached our customers directly and said they are now ready to connect the phones.

Our customers have been presented with application forms to sign citing us as the connecting dealership. But we are not trading with them anymore. Your Communications sales director Paul Lawton has done nothing about it.

Your Communications is trying to pass itself off as Telecom South to put the deals through. If the deals go through we have to honour them financially even though we havent put them through said Essex.

Your Communications has also sent us incorrect statements showing payments to us that we havent received.

Paul Lawton issued a statement saying:

Your Communications and Telecom South are currently working together to bring our relationship to a close.

There are some loose ends that need to be tied up. But Ive spoken with Clive Thomas Telecom Souths managing director and well hopefully be meeting next week to finalise these. Both parties are confident that the outstanding issues can be dealt with satisfactorily.

Certainly Your Communications feels that its actions to date have been both appropriate and professional.

Sales director Gareth Limpenny UK sales manager John Whitlock and export manager Rob Beard have all handed in their notice and will leave European Telecom next month to pursue careers outside the company.

Said European Telecom group managing director David McKinney:

We are informing those affected by the changes and have moved quickly to ensure that there is no negative impact on our ability to service our customers and on our relationships with them.

Gareth and Rob will continue to support ET until they leave in late September. We are currently recruiting for these roles. We would like to thank Gareth John and Rob for their contributions to ET and to wish them well for the future added McKinney.

Limpenny has been with European Telecom for six years. Whitlock departs after five years with the company and Beard has seven years service with ET.

Panasonic originally announced it would launch its top of the range GPRS handset the GD95 at the end of Q2 this year.

Panasonic head of UK business systems Bob Tate says:

Without a firm and finished specification we have been unable to bring the product to market in the timescale we originally planned. It is inconclusive from operators consumers and the market in general as to their view of GPRS in the short term.

Theres no-one to blame in particular. There is a combination of factors. Its not clear if the market is ready willing or able to take on GPRS handsets services and new ways of billing.

Panasonic is not happy with the GPRS specification because it is incomplete. There are risks in trying to manufacture a product when you feel insecure about the specification. Other manufacturers have taken a different view. We are concerned that the product has to perform for customers and offer real benefits.

Adds Tate: As a company we tend to be a little more conservative rather than taking risks. Until we are happy with the final specification for GPRS we wont start manufacturing. There is some way to go before we launch GPRS.

On February 5 Tate told Mobile News that Panasonics poor market share performance to date was partly due to a delay in manufacturing WAP handsets. He says that the situation regarding GPRS is different.

With WAP we clearly werent in a position to manufacture. We could manufacture GPRS handsets today but we wont until we are happy the specification is right.

Tate admits Panasonic has a poor position in the market but is confident the delay to GPRS will not be a major blow to sales. We enjoyed a small peak in June. But its nothing Im going to rave about. We are not losing or gaining market share at the moment. We would have liked to launch our entry-level product the GD35 earlier than we did. Market conditions prevented that. Operators had large amounts of stock on their hands that they needed to clear which dictated our ability to get GD35 out.

Our performance might have been better had we been able to get the product out to market earlier. The GD95 has been well received by operators.

We intend to launch it without GPRS. It wont send our market share into double digits but I believe we will register some forward movement over the next couple of quarters. We are short on our targets but our strategy hasnt changed.

These 22 companies have seen sales decline nearly 20 per cent on average over the last year. Around 68 per cent of them are now at high financial risk according to Plimsoll and all of these companies are loss-making.

They tended to be the smaller companies and are seemingly getting left out of an otherwise healthy market. Current market growth for the industry is a robust 25 per cent says Plimsoll.

Plimsoll reckons 16 per cent of the industry is losing market and profitability. These companies are finding the market tight and highly competitive says Plimsoll.

Forty-four per cent are showing no signs of recession at all.

Seven per cent are adopting a steady approach to profits and in most cases are using these profits to pay off debts.

Thirty-two per cent are striving for as much market as they can get. Currently though these companies are showing poor returns for their efforts Plimsoll adds.