Vodafone - the international communication giant - has announce a retail deal with Dell the computer manufacturer. Dell’s Inspiron Minni 9 laptop computer will be sold exclusively via Vodafone stores (as well as directly from Dell.
The deal illustrates the growing interest from communications companies in offering Laptops sold with a Mobile dongle allowing access to the internet.
Laptop Insurance is coming soon to www.Insurance2go.co.uk
Like for likes down at DSGi
Sales slump 7 per cent, worse than many analysts expected.
Total Group sales were up 4% in sterling, down 2% in local currency, and like for like sales down 7%. Gross margins across the Group were down 0.75% year on year. Five PC World stores have been refitted to the new format and the company is upgrading a further 25 PC World stores in time for Peak. The company has also been concentrating on customer service, with 20,000 colleagues having completed the programme.
John Browett, Chief Executive, commented, ‘We have had a challenging start to the year, although we are trading against tough comparables. The economic backdrop in which the Group operates remains difficult across Europe, and we are managing costs and stock levels accordingly. We remain very cautious about the consumer outlook. This is a period of intense activity for the Group as we action our three year renewal and transformation plan and focus on the customer. We are revamping ranges, retraining staff, and simplifying the business. Although we are only four months in, a lot of changes are already underway which will benefit both our customers and our shareholders.’
This week’s trading update (due out on Friday Sept 5) from HMV is predicted to have been helped by the bad weather, according to Pali International, which has increased its price target on the company.
The broker suggests HMV has prepared the market for only 2% to 3% like-for-like sales growth this year but that it will have done better than this in the first 18 weeks of the financial year.
This adds to Pali’s view that its full year pre-tax profit forecast of £65 million for HMV is well under-pinned. As a result its target price has been upped from 110p to 120p, which compares with an underlying share price of 133.25p. It maintains its ‘Neutral’ recommendation on the company.
The latest annual report from Ofcom shows that there are 74 million mobile connections serving a population of 60 million in the UK. The average user sent 67 texts per month, just under 60 billion texts were sent on 2007 compared with 17 billion in 2002.
There has been a surge in the sales of mobile laptop connections - between Feb - June 2008 dongle sales lept from 68,000 to 133,000 per month. In that period there were 511,000 new mobile broadband connections.
Last year the average household spent £93.63 on comunications per month, a drop of £1.53 from the monthly amount in 2006.
The New Nokia 8800 Arte Mobile - coming soon.
Nokia have announced the launch of the Nokia 8800 Arte Mobile for later this quarter. The stylish handset will be made of carbon fibre, titanium polished glass and stainless steel. The phone has a number of interesting new features:
Tap for time - to get the time displayed on the screen the user simply taps the surface of the phone twice below the display.
Turn-to-mute - allows the user to silence incoming calls by turing the handset face down.
The phone even has an anti-fingerprinting coating to reduce smudges.
Nice pieve of kit, when it’s out there and you want to insure yours you can with insurance2go.
Wordwide sales of Mobile Phones is expected to hit 1.28 billion this year. This is an 11% increase on last year. Despite this sales in Europe will drop for the first time since 2001.
An interesting development that people have been talking about for ages has finally happened. Subscribers to Blyk Mobile (MVNO) is giving calls and texts away to it’s customers if they agree to have advertising sent to their phone.
Blyk offers 16-to-25 year-olds 43 free minutes and 217 free texts per month (teenage optimum usage, apparently) in return for taking receipt of six MMS advertisements per day.
Over the course of a year, it adds up to, according to Blyk, to £300 of free mobile use. Blyk’s strategy of growing it’s base is unconventional to say the least – membership is by invitation only, with occasional open offerings via its website.
Note: an MVNO: Mobile Virtual Network Operator, that uses a conventional network operator’s serivces and resells it, in the case of Blyk UK Orange, Virgin is a more famous example)
Shares in Vodafone, the international Telecoms giant, slumped 14% yesterday on news that it has reduced it’s full year revenue to the bottom end of the £39.8 billion and £40.7 billion range given in May.
In the UK the network has lost a net figure of 27,000 customers, with a reduction of 4.4%.
Over 400 Mobile Phones were handed in as lost property at this year’s Glastonbury festival. I wonder how many were insured? Probably to be expected given that the festival attracts over 180,000 revellers.
