About Electronics

The Register: Germany’s western state of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) has told Nokia to repay all its subsidies plus interest by 31 March or face legal action.

The German state paid €41m in aid for Nokia’s mobile phone factory in Bochum, under the condition that at least 2,800 jobs would be created. However, the Finnish mobile giant is to close its plant by 30 June and move its operation to Romania.

The closure of the plant infuriated many German unions and politicians and fuelled a strong anti-Nokia and anti-Finnish sentiment in the country with many consumers turning their backs on Nokia products.

But Nokia says it has no choice. Labour and non-wage labour costs in Germany are not competitive enough for the mass-production of Nokia products. In Romania, the average monthly salaries will be about one-tenth of the average wage of workers at Bochum.

Nokia employed more than 2,300 people in Bochum in exchange for EU and state subsidies. The company says it fulfilled all the necessary conditions for the subsidies, but NRW believes Nokia fell short of the required numbers by 200 to 400 posts between 2002 and 2005.

On Tuesday, the state government formally demanded that the company pay back €41m in subsidies, plus €18m in interest.

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Electronista: Following its UK launch, Apple on Wednesday is expected to announce an agreement with T-Mobile to offer the iPhone in Germany. Supporting earlier reports, Dow Jones Newswire reports that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs will announce the company’s iPhone carrier agreement with T-Mobile in Berlin at the German Telekom AG.

In addition to all the revolutionary features that made iPhone so popular in the US, iPhone users in Germany will have access to Apple’s latest music offerings on iPhone including the recently launched iTunes® Wi-Fi Music Store. The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store offers customers the ability to browse, search, preview, purchase and download songs and albums from iTunes over the built-in Wi-Fi on their iPhone. No computer is required and when the customer connects their iPhone back with the PC or Mac, their music automatically syncs back into their iTunes library.

The T-Mobile network will also support iPhone’s unique Visual Voicemail feature, which enables users to immediately randomly access those messages that interest them most.

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Heise: There will likely be no labeling in the near future of low-radiation mobile handsets. On Wednesday the majority of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety of the Bundestag, the lower chamber of Germany’s Federal Parliament in Berlin, rejected a proposal by the opposition Liberal party (FDP) to ask mobile phone manufacturers to commit voluntarily to indicating by way of a label the radiation levels of handsets. The opposition Green Party’s proposal to make such labeling mandatory was also rejected.

The representatives of the parliamentary groups of the ruling Conservatives claimed there was no well-founded link between mobile handsets, the electromagnetic radiation these produce and sickness and disease in humans. In addition they pointed to difficulties that might arise in the domain of international competition, if such labeling were to occur. The ruling Social Democrats (SPD) stressed that research did not at present indicate that there was a danger. Among other institutions the Federal Office for Radiation Protection lists on its website the SAR values of specific handset models. The Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) indicates the amount of radiation energy the head of a person using the phone absorbs on average in relation to his or her body mass.

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Heise: Let Beyoncé handle it. Korean electronics firm Samsung wants to give its stagnating sales of cell phones in Germany a boost with the help of such prominent artists as American R&B singer, who will be pointing out Samsung’s competence in multimedia cell phones.

Having entered the market to beat out Motorola for second position on the global market, Samsung’s market share in Germany is still only at around 12 percent, below the European average.

Now, Samsung’s marketing director David Steel has revealed to the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) that new devices with music functions and megapixel cameras are to change all that. (more…)

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Heise online: In Germany sales of LCD-TVs rose by 104 percent to 2.86 billion euros last year. After navigation devices, which led the pack with sales growth of around 113 percent to 823 million euros, flat screens posted the second-fastest growth. Game consoles came in third on the Consumer Electronic Market Index (CEMIX) with 30 percent growth to reach 488 million euros.

The German Society for Home Entertainment and Communications Electronics (gfu) and the German Association of Retail Technology (BVT) draws up the CEMIX every year to reflect consumer demand for such products in Germany.

In the overall market for entertainment electronics, telecommunications, and information technology, the market researchers found that consumers spent some 4.5 percent more at 22.41 billion euros. In November, both gfu and BVT were still forecasting 3.5 percent growth. In particular, demand for LCD and plasma TVs probably gave the industry a sales boost during the Christmas season. Home entertainment electronics managed to grow by more than 10 percent to 13.4 billion euros.

In 2006, sales of navigation systems skyrocketed by more than 200 percent to 2.16 million items. Despite plummeting prices for navigation systems, manufacturers posted 113 percent greater sales at 823 million euros. Cell phone manufacturers also want to get a piece of the action and are therefore launching a wider range of models with integrated GPS navigation.

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