Back in January, Nokia announced that it would be closing one of its Germany based manufacturing plants in order to build a factory in Romania where the cost of labor is considerably cheaper.
Of course this sparked a bit of an outcry due to the loss of so many Jobs, blackening Nokia’s name in Germany somewhat and prompting politicians to publicly boycott the company (indeed, many of the people I know here in Munich have vowed to steer clear of Nokia).
At the time of the announcement, 300 workers demonstrated outside Nokia’s Dusseldorf offices for fair redundancy payments. The result it seems, as reported by The Earth Times, is 200 million Euros which Nokia has just announced it will be paying to workers of the soon to close Bochum factory on the back of an agreement with the German Unions.
Better than a kick in the teeth but the German public will still likely bear a grudge against Nokia for a time at retail, especially when alternatives like the iPhone have just had such a dramatic price cut.
A German truck driver pulled over for using his mobile behind the wheel recently, concocted what has to be either one of the most ingenious, or one of the most ridiculous excuses in the history of mankind. When the boys in blue (or green and khaki as they wear over there) questioned the 43-year old, he claimed that he wasn’t using it to talk but to “warm his ear” in order to alleviate the pain of an earache he was suffering at the time.
He didn’t stop there though, following through on his claim, the man later produced an itemized telephone bill that proved wasn’t using the phone at the time he was stopped. The court that heard the case in Hamm accepted the excuse and let him go scot-free. It really puts excuses like ‘my dog ate my homework’ or ‘she was helping me relieve tension in my back’ firmly in their place doesn’t it?
(Via switched)
A German government minister, Horst Seehofer, has claimed that he is joining in a boycott of Nokia handsets after the company announced it will close Germany’s last surviving wireless handset factory.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, the agriculture minister stated that he was changing to another handset “because I don’t like the way they are doing this.”
This follows similar declarations from Dietmar Muscheid, a trade union leader in North Rhine-Westphalia state, and Peter Struck, the Social Democratic whip in the federal parliament, both of which have made their boycotting of Nokia handsets very public.
The plant at Bochum, West Germany employs 2,300 people who will lose their jobs when the manufacturing operation is to moved to Cluj, Romania where the cost of labor is cheaper.
(Via Earthtimes)
T-Mobile and Vodafone will go head to head in a Hamburg court this week in their fight over marketing rights for Apple’s iPhone in Germany. A date for the hearing has been set for November 29.
Vodafone last week filed an injunction with German courts requesting a hearing over T-Mobile’s exclusive rights to sell iPhones in Germany. It questioned the legality of T-Mobile locking iPhones to its network and its binding contracts for users.
German laws are different to those in the UK, and the exclusive T-Mobile-Apple deal could be illegal. If the court finds in favour of Vodafone, iPhones will have to be available unlocked in Germany.
Since the injunction last week T-Mobile has already changed its iPhone offer and is now selling Sim-free iPhones for over £700.
German iPhone fans will be waiting with baited breath for the court’s decision this week, as will we.
Quite a timely bit of rumour-mongering this one, given that Apple’s just made a series of big iPod/ iPhone-related announcements. By bringing the price of the 8GB iPhone down to $399 (£200) in the US, Apple has cleared the way for a possible 16GB top-end iPhone (matching the storage spec of the new iPod touch).
There have been rumours flying for months about there being a 3G/ HSDPA version of the iPhone in the works for Europe. So this supposed T-Mobile ad for Germany, found via MacBidouille, purporting to show a 16GB, HSDPA iPhone for €499 (£339) slots nicely among the current batch of rumours. But for €59 (£40) we’d expect a damn sight more than 300 mins/ 150 texts; file this for now under maybe, not definitely.
(Via AppleInsider)
Recent Comments